To many I am superwoman. I am the embodiment of perfection.

I speak my mind, I have comebacks for every argument, I am witty and articulate.

I am strong. I will not spend hours crying over a lost love.

I just spend the hours plotting revenge.

I am not afraid, never plagued by doubt or insecurity. Or conscience.

I know who I am, what I want, and how to get it.

I hate her. Little Miss Perfect, arrogant and unflinching.

She plants ideas of vengeance in my mind, tries to manipulate me into becoming another version of her. Does she not know it cannot help?

I envy her. She is untroubled by uncertainty, unperturbed by principles.

I despise her. It irks me when she trips over her own two feet, when she drops her lunch tray on the floor of the cafeteria, when she gets hit by the basketball during gym. She sets herself up for ridicule. Like a lamb for slaughter. She never retaliates. Instead she heads to a quiet corner, her face streaked with tears of self-pity. Yet she refuses to heed my voice of reason. I ask myself why I cannot just let her be, why I bother wasting my time on this pathetic worm.

Why does she try to help me? Does she not know it only does me more harm than good? She seems to be mocking me. She comes to me when I am alone, when nobody is looking. It appears she is extending the hand of friendship, but I am wary to take it. How can she forget so many years of enmity? Pity is not an emotion she is familiar with.

I pity her sometimes. Constantly living in my shadow, though I am the one unseen.

She will never be as powerful as I am, though she holds the reins.

I am everything. She is nothing.

I can never be as good as she is. At the same time there is a sense of relief that I will never be as bad as she is.

I am repulsed by her, yet she is everything I yearn to be.

Why do I not just give in to her? I am afraid I will not recognize myself by the time she is through. She is powerful, and I am weak.

There is no way out of this.

I hate my screwed-up life. Sometimes I wish we could trade places.

But one thing I do envy of her.

Her freedom. Her freedom of speech. Freedom of expressing herself.

For I am but another manifestation of her, trapped, condemned to forever stay in her shadow, unseen.