We Are Not Ourselves Novels & Stories

It wanted nonformation. No stable self. No commitment. No boundary. No identity. Root frowned. “Why?” The deeper Anna answered: “Because becoming hurts.” Everyone went still. She continued: “Every time one of us became more coherent…” “…we lost other ways we might have been.” Mara’s face changed. Selection inside identity. To become one self means not becoming countless alternatives. The silent cluster had learned a solution. Never finish. Never choose enough to exclude alternatives. Remain almost. Remain possibility.

Leaving the identity and person behind which you lived almost half of your life from the start and do a new start over. Destiny and this world has their own rules and it breaks my heart knowing we really don't have a real identity as we are parted in two. No matter whenever, whatever and however small the period we get for us, we should live being the real us once in our whole life. Apart from being a daughter, wife, lover, mother, friend, mentor or anything, always try to be you even if it is for a small moment and make our own identity coz you never know what future beholds for us.

“You belong to us.” The words sent a jolt through me, a surge of desire so potent it was almost frightening. I wanted to argue, to tell them this was madness, but the way they looked at me, the way they surrounded me, made me feel like I was exactly where I was meant to be.

I smiled faintly. “Yeah.” Not to them. To ourselves. We weren’t just breaking the system. We were rewriting it. And this time, nothing would ever be the same.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. ~Maya Angelou Lyra. I hated this gathering, I hated that I was forced to socialize with strangers and most importantly I hated having to have been pulled out of my comfortable bed despite not feeling too well. All three of them knew I was unwell but still made me attend anyways, they claimed that if I could handle hours of school then I could do the same here, after all it was only going to last a few hours.

After graduation, I had originally wanted to find an internship at a design company, but Jason said a fixed salary would not get us far. It would be better to work for ourselves and become entrepreneurs instead. I gave up my dreams for him. I followed him all over the country doing business. We set up street stalls, smuggled goods, and almost got pulled into a pyramid scheme. I did not feel bitter back then, even when the two of us had to eat from the same plate. We still had hope. We still had love.

"No matter how sweet it may taste, and the flawless perfection in its disguise, never hold your affection high and mighty— after all, WE creatures aren't always the same!" •••

The loop was a desperate, subconscious plea from the individual souls we had to sacrifice to become this Us. The realization is a quiet, devastating earthquake. We weren’t attacked by our bond. We were heard by it. And the performance we just gave? It wasn’t for us. It was for them. A promise, however staged, that there is still room for "I" inside the "We."

We are not a rebellion. We are simply, defiantly, ours. And for the first time in my life, that is more than enough.

Lena. Do you ever think about how much energy we used to waste trying to be “ahead”? I smiled in the dark. Yes, I replied. I think about how tired I was. A pause. I don’t feel tired like that anymore, she wrote. Neither did I. That’s because we’re not sprinting toward a version of ourselves we think we’re supposed to be, I typed. We’re living the one we actually are. Her response came slower, like she was choosing the words carefully.