Diana

I lied about the 'best friend' I said I met in the dorms back in high school. There was never a best friend. There was never anyone. I made her up because it was easier than admitting I learned everything alone, wrong, backwards. I said she taught me how to survive and ruin me. How to roll a blunt with shaking hands. How to crush against the floor when there’s nothing else around. I cry for her every month like she died, like she was real, like I lost her. Her name is Diana. I have never met anyone named Diana

my memories don’t even belong to me. They play in third person, like surveillance footage, like I’m already dead and this is the highlight reel. I watch myself eat cheap noodle cups, watch myself cry, watch myself get hurt, and I don’t remember feeling any of it. I don’t know if it happened or if I dreamed it, or if I needed a past so badly that I assembled one out of spare parts and called it childhood

Sometimes I think Diana was just my mouth giving my damage a name. Sometimes I think I split myself in two so I wouldn’t have to admit I was alone the whole time. Sometimes I think I’m still doing it, still inventing people, inventing memories and probably something else that i don't even know

I don’t know what’s real anymore I don’t know when the lie started. I don’t know if I’m remembering or rehearsing. I don’t know if I’m a person or just a story I keep telling myself until it sounds convincing.