I Know Who You Are

by Alice Feeney

Not everybody wants to be somebody. Some people just want to be somebody else.

Sometimes it’s the people who love us the most that hurt us the hardest; because they can.

The lies we tell ourselves are always the most dangerous.

Papering over the cracks doesn’t mean they’re not there, but life is prettier when you do.

We are all programmed to rewrite our past to protect ourselves in the present.

Ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s fear postponed to a later date.

lies don’t come with gift receipts; you can’t take them back.

I wear the idea of him like a blanket, and it makes me feel safe and warm, the cloak of fantasy always more reliable than cold reality.

You can never predict how you will behave when life goes nonlinear; you don’t know until it happens to you. People are capable of all kinds of surprising things.

We exchange the currency of our dreams for a reality funded by acceptance as we get older.

I’m of the belief that while the opinions of strangers shouldn’t matter, they often do.

The only thing I’m guilty of is fraud, the relationship variety. We all sometimes pretend to love something or someone we don’t: an unwanted gift, a friend’s new haircut, a husband. We’ve evolved to be so good at it, we can even fool ourselves. It’s more laziness than deceit; to acknowledge when the love has run out would mean having to do something about it. Relationship fraud is endemic nowadays.

Hiding the truth from ourselves is a similar game to hiding it from others, it just comes with a stricter set of rules.

things that are a little bit broken can still be beautiful.

We all make daily decisions about which secrets to decant, and which to keep for a later date, when they might taste better on our tongues.

Sometimes it only takes one person to believe in you to change your life forever. Sometimes it only takes one person not believing in you to destroy it. Humans are a highly sensitive species.

We are all conditioned and fine-tuned to our own unique brand of normal; we wear it like a fingerprint. We’re taught to fit in with others and learn what is expected of us from the moment we are born.

You can’t allow the past to steal your present, but if you siphon off just the right amount, it can help fuel your future.

Books can be mirrors, too, offering a reflection of our worst selves for appraisal; lessons tucked between pages, just waiting to be learned.

They’re all far too busy staring at their phones, partaking in the daily withdrawal from wonder and the world around them. We’ve all got so busy staring down at our screens that we’ve forgotten to look up at the stars.

think it can be dangerous to spend too long watching the lives of others; you might run out of time to live your own.

The world will keep on spinning and the stars will always shine, regardless of whether anyone is looking.

As I sit and stare at the galaxy of faces, trying to get from one place to another, I understand that it doesn’t matter who we are or what we do; we’re all the same. We are all just stars trying to shine in the darkness.

People say we can be anyone we want to be in life. That’s a lie. The truth is, we can be anyone we believe we can be. There’s a big difference.

We are all capable of the most fantastical fiction in the aid of self-preservation. A shield of lies can protect from the toughest of truths.

I realize that these thoughts are neither normal or healthy, but they are the only ones currently occupying my mind, and I’m rather enjoying them.

I know I need to slow down, but sometimes the advice we give ourselves is the hardest to hear.

I’m starting to think there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to be the version of me I could live with. The version of me who could be forgiven for all the terrible things I’ve made myself do to get where I am today.

It’s morning, but it’s so early that even the sun isn’t up yet; the moon is still doing a sideways smile in the black sky.

When you dig down, deep enough inside your own despair, you usually meet the you that you used to be, but I don’t remember her.

It feels as if I have to be someone different now, someone strong and brave, a role I’m not sure how to play.

Sometimes, at our lowest moments, life lends us a signpost,

It’s okay to sometimes do the wrong thing in life, so long as you accept the consequences,

The familiar cast of my bad dreams delivered a stellar performance this evening. A standing ovation of insomnia was the only suitable response to the story on the stage of my mind.

Funny how life does that sometimes—throws you a line when you’re drowning, just as your head is about to completely disappear below the surface of your darkest troubles.

I should have learned to let go long before now, but I held on too tight to what I thought I wanted: a chance to start again. This is all my fault. Your past only owns you if you allow it to.

A thick skin can wear thin when worn too often.

She remembers that she hasn’t eaten all day, so eases her tired feet into her slippers and shuffles to the kitchen to examine the contents of the fridge. Everything she sees is disappointingly healthy, and that isn’t what she wants or needs right now.

I don’t know Jack, not really, he’s just a colleague, not a friend. Some people don’t know the difference, but I do. Right now, it feels as if I don’t have anyone left in the world who knows the real me. Nobody I can be myself with.

Sometimes self-preservation means staying away from the people who pretend to care about you.

sharing the same blood does not necessarily make you family.

wish I could erase what happened that day; the memory of it has never stopped haunting me, and I’ve felt alone in the world ever since.

Life is a game that few of us really know how to play, filled with more snakes than ladders. I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve been playing it all wrong. Perhaps, when all is said and done, and the world decides to turn against you, people are more important than parts.

We learn to future-proof our hearts, building a maze around them until they are almost impossible for others to find.

When things don’t look right, sometimes you just have to change your perspective,

Life might have moved the goalposts when she wasn’t looking, but she’s confident that if she adjusts the plan and her aim just a little, she can still win the game.

We all avoid the truth when we think it might hurt too much.

I embroidered the truth a little, just a few stitches here and there, to present the story how I have chosen to remember it. I might have let the waist of the story out just a tiny bit around the middle, to let it breathe, but that’s okay. I think we all do that. The stories we tell each other about our lives are like snow globes. We shake the facts of what happened in our minds, then watch and wait while the pieces settle into fiction. If we don’t like the way the pieces fall, we just shake the story again, until it looks how we want it to.

I don’t want to let the fantasy of fiction seduce me into a false sense of security; I’ve made that mistake before.

We lead the life we choose to, based on what we think we deserve, and we hold on to the memories that mean the most to us, the moments we believe shaped the life we lead now. It’s a pretty simple system, but it works.