Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

I try to hold on, try to be someone and stay somewhere I am not, but I can’t. I am only ever me and I am here, where I already know I do not wish to be.

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.

There are moments when I think it would be a relief to drown, for it all to be over.

It’s becoming harder to separate the dreams from my reality and I’m scared of both.

They’ve endured a rare breed of marriage, the kind where the love lasts over thirty years. But it’s the kind of love that makes me feel sad and empty, a love based on habit and dependence; it isn’t real.

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.

Sometimes I feel like everyone is happier than I am, as though they’re all in on a secret I’m not privy to.

Some people are ghosts before they are dead.

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.