Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me any more. 3. Sometimes I lie.

have the face of someone who might have been pretty once, I barely recognise her now.

A lot of people would think I have a dream job, but nightmares are dreams too.

I can play all the parts life has cast me in, I know all my lines; I’ve been rehearsing for a very long time.

People are not mirrors, they don’t see you how you see yourself.

I’ve been returned to my factory settings as a human being, rather than a human doing.

I think my parents used to love me, but I disappointed them so often that the love got rubbed out.

Nana always said that books made better friends than people anyway. Books will take you anywhere if you let them, she used to say, and I think she was right.

That’s pretty much my life. I told you it wasn’t as interesting as Anne Frank’s.

We are all made of flesh and stars, but we all become dust in the end. Best to shine while you can.

I fear one day the dark water will swallow me down for good, I won’t always be able to resurface. Switches are either on or off. People are either up or down. When I’m down, it’s so very hard to get back up and this is the furthest I’ve ever fallen. Even if I could remember my way back to normal, I don’t think I’d recognise myself when I got there.

I don’t hate my parents, I just hate that they stopped loving me.

I’m not as ugly on the outside as I feel on the inside, but I still don’t like what I see.

I hate this body almost as much as I hate myself. It didn’t do what it was supposed to. It didn’t give him what he wanted.

The dead are not so very far away when you really need them; they’re just on the other side of an invisible wall.

Grief is only ever yours and so is guilt. It’s not something you can share.

I don’t avoid broken people because I think I’m better than them, I just don’t like looking at my own reflection.

I’ve also stopped showering to save the water we haven’t paid for but nobody seems to have noticed.

History is a mirror and we’re all just older versions of ourselves; children disguised as adults.

We are all just ghosts of the people we hoped that we were and counterfeit replicas of the people we wanted to be.

People say there’s nothing like a mother’s love, take that away and you’ll find there is nothing like a daughter’s hate.

It was his drug of choice to heal the hurt and he poured it inside himself in its purest form. Neat. But the result was never tidy. It was like having a front row seat for a slow suicide.

Some people appear happy on the outside and you only know they’re broken inside if you listen as well as look.