Call me crazy, but I’ve created an alter ego for myself. She’s confident, dark, a little mysterious, popular, well received, beautiful, and very much what I wish I were. But I know I won’t be her. I named her Lilly.
Lily stepped into my life just a few months ago. I was lonely, and a silly boy from my high school happened to sit down on the train across the table from me. Awefully close for such silent corridors, but he was sweet enough, and I kinda needed the company. “Hey Lily, long time no see!” he exclaimed happily, shoving his bag off his shoulder on the empty seat next to him.
I smile at him, just grateful to have someone I knew distracting me from my world. “It’s Amy. How’ve you been Tom?”
He laughed at me. “Sure, sure, anything you want Lily. I’ve been okay. But enough about me, what about you cupcake. What have you been up to all my life?”
And that was where it started. Around Tom, I felt like a champion, like a prize worth having. I don’t get that feeling a lot on my own, or with most others. Most of the time I wonder if people even care that I exist. There’s one or two here or there, but really… and it does make me wonder about other people, if they’re having as bad a day I am, but I’m just too shy to ever say anything to them. I try to get over it, but I’m not doing a very good job of it.
And then there’s Mitch. I happen to know that pretty much every day for him is as bad, if not worse, than my days. He doesn’t get along with his dad well, and his mom just mostly keeps to herself, is what I understand from the occasional things he drops in our conversations, so things at home are tight, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I heard also that his dad just got laid off, which is making things even worse for him. But I’m not entirely sure. We haven’t been talking much lately. Which kinda bothers me, because he was fine with Amy. He liked Amy. He and Amy were best friends. He didn’t need a Lily to be attracted to.
Most of the time that’s the way I feel. I can get the guys I like with Lily. Lily has the guts to even just say hi to them. I don’t. I just sit on the other end of the bus, staring out the window and knowing they’ll never notice me. Maybe we’ll never get far, but at least Lily can make friends, and that’s what I need right now.
Just some friends to take me in in when I’m lost and lonely. Because that’s what I feel like every time I can’t find Lily.
I’m disappearing, and it scares me terribly.
