The Other Me
‘Falling’ iii. I always wanted to tell stories. As a kid, my imagination never stopped ticking. It drove stories early in primary school into accounts unrecognisable from the truth, and pushed them towards grandiosity when I got into the later grades. In high school, I’d handwrite epics – fifty or sixty pages long. If I watched movies, the movies would inspire me to similar ideas, or even to possible sequels. Ideas always tumbled around in my head. Even fantasies were accompanied with a narrative, a voice in my head that articulated how they unfolded. For a while, storytelling hid behind other teenage pursuits. At one time or another, I wanted…
The Other Me
‘Falling’ ii. I woke in the morning, not sure I’d ever gotten back to sleep, my head pulsing but raw, the way a bad cut feels after it’s been tended. Underneath it, a flightiness, like whatever had filled me last night was a breath from returning. Everything around me was too stark – noises, voices, arguments. I didn’t tell anybody how I was feeling. I’d never gone to my family with problems. When I broke up with my first girlfriend, when I got bullied in high school, when anything happened, I never told anybody. We weren’t close like that. That was a soap reality, something you’d see on TV. In…