A Safe Place

I've been having great fun with Death To Stock Photo's writing prompts on Medium. This was a response to the "Safe Space" prompt.

Another writing prompt from Death To Stock Photo and like the other, is entirely fictional

My safe place was always in other peoples’ lives. Especially my sister.

Pretending to be her was my fall-back when I started feeling scared. She was prettier than me, smarter than me, thinner than me, but most people didn’t know that. When someone wanted to know who the fuck I was, I said Sarah.

Sarah was an interior decorator — that seemed cooler than the accountant that my sister actually was. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but she had many lovers from around the world. She lived a cosmopolitan life in London, critically examining the art in galleries and meeting interesting people.

It was easy to slip into her skin. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know who she’d talked to last week, or what exactly she did for a living, because Sarah didn’t need to explain herself to anyone. She was beyond questioning; don’t even bother.

When someone tried to confront me about something — “Hey, you’re that weird girl I went to school with!” — I’d say no, I’m Sarah. I have no idea who you’re talking about. Insist it enough, and no matter how sure they were, I could throw them off.

When being me gets too much I just become someone else. My safe place is anywhere but in my own head.

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