I remember where I was today, last year.

With them, and how the world was turned so far upside down and I am mirrored by that self I once called mine. And I know things now that no one would have ever told me before and sometimes I miss the oblivion, because things were safer there when no one touched me and I spent nights alone with my thoughts because it was better than being with them.

I barely think anymore, and I don’t like that I like it better this way.

And “we” tried so hard to be a family that day in the heat so much like this, but something was strange and not one of else felt at home.

Then, when she looked at me and said she never learned how to ride a bike, judgment poured out from my heart in thunderbolts at the life she led, and maybe that is why we will never be closer than in those moments before this day when nothing was pity, and all was spite.

I realize now what I never knew back then: she is not herself—we are her, for she lives her life through the bodies of other people because she is too scared to go out and try things for herself, too afraid of how sharp the world could be.

It scares me, because I was that person once.

It’s hard for me to decide which one I am—we are different people, and while I miss who they were before, my differences are worth it, I think.

But that’s because they weren’t the ones that changed.

I am.