I'm Not Emily Ross

We sip in silence at the cups that appeared in front of us and I contemplate the reality of this illusion in my mind and I come to a conclusion and it’s the same one she put forward.

This may be real. This may not be real. I will ask and I will act and I will speak and participate, but only in the morning will I determine truth.

If this is just a dream then all I’m doing is having a conversation with myself. Talking in my own mind to my own thoughts, but that can be useful in some ways.

A conversation with yourself can grant you insight into how you think about something, and it can open up new possibilities of understanding. And the simple fact was that I had so many revelations and ideas I didn’t know how to handle, so anything that could grant me some measure of comprehension was a welcome advancement.

“How have you been enjoying yourself?” she asked eventually, her form gradually having settled into the same one I saw the first time I met her.

“In this new life of mine?” I ask with a sardonic drawl.

She shook her head though, “Not a new life. Not exactly.”

“But it is,” I insisted, “This isn’t me.”

“Isn’t it?” she sighs, a wistful and almost sad look coming into her eyes, “The window dressing is different but the spirit remains. This is who you would have been, had the cards been dealt a little differently.”

I couldn’t accept that, though, and I was finally starting to understand why. My time in her bedroom, unpacking her things and setting them away, had given me insight that I was beginning to piece together and bit by bit a broader picture was starting to form.

I could look into her memories and see more of it. I could see the person she’d been, back when she was in the same town as I grew up in and surrounded by all the same people. I could see events she’d gone through that were paralleled in my own life and I could see the way she was ostracized and left out of things. The loneliness that was almost soul crushing and absolutely a part of her. The feeling of otherness.

The need to escape.

All that was there for her as it was for me but there was something more and something beyond that. Something in the little teddy bear she brought with her, in the books she chose to keep, in the clothes she picked out to bring along for a new life. Something that I thought I’d had but I hadn’t because I’d gone into this so much differently than she had and that made her different from me and this woman had to know that.

“I’m not Emily Ross,” and she’s about to tell me something else but I cut her off by raising my voice and insisting that, “She’s sentimental. She’s sweet. She’s hopeful. And I was never any of those things.”

I feel like crying, the tears pricking at my eyes and burning. Never cried much before, but I know these tears come from me.

“I thought I was hopeful but I wasn’t, not like her at least. When I left I just wanted to burn the memory of who I had been and start again but she held onto it, she had that sentimentality that has always been missing in me.

“So how can I be her and how can she be me if we can be so different? How is it that you can stand here and tell me that if the cards had been dealt differently I would have been a completely different person. I don’t recognize the Emily that she is. I wouldn’t have been that person. I wasn’t that person.”

“You weren’t,” she agrees, nodding and quiet after my rant.

I’m breathing heavily and barely keeping the tears at bay. My hands are shaking and as I set the cup in the saucer it clatters before settling to a rest. And then I’m slowly inhaling and slowly exhaling and I’m staring down at the surface of the tea as it vibrates and I hear her speak, so quiet and so soft.

“But you never asked why she was different. You never considered what would make her feel that way.”

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