Day after day, I live a new life. I wake up in the morning and find myself in a new life, day after day. And as my eyes close and sleep grips my consciousness, this new life I leave, night after night. For countless days, innumerable months, endless years, day after day, night after night. How long had I occupied the lives of others? How long have I lived a day in another’s body? I fear even I could not remember. But despite this, I could vividly remember the lives I have lived in each and everyone of those days.

With no rhyme nor reason, no pattern nor design, a new life I inhabit every single day. I remember my days as an abused and mistreated Slave as well as my days as a greedy and horrible Bandit. I have lived as a King loved by my people and a Beggar shunned by all. I have experienced a life of a traitorous Knight and a noble Thief. A Princess awaiting her beloved and a Witch seeking her revenge. A day as a lowly Beast and a day as a wonderous Fae. I have been the beloved Daughter of a wealthy merchant and a hateful Son of cruel bandit. Each and everyone of them, and so, so much more, all their lives I have lived and I have remembered. 

Of course I was bewildered when this all began, to suddenly see a face that is not yours, to hear a voice that is not your own, to move in a body you’ve never had before. Like all of my other days, I recall this day with perfect clarity. I was a young woman in that day, and while this life was as unremarkable and plain as it could get, it was also the day where I first experienced the life of another. Oh how I panicked and floundered about like a fish out of water. I wept and wept for well over half the day, for how wrong it felt to be in a life you do not own. I will be the first to admit that I may have acted in an exaggerated manner, but please do not fault me for this. It was after all my first day in the life of another.

The rest of the day was spent in a daze, with the woman’s husband and young daughter, well my husband and daughter I suppose,  were worrying about me. It was a strange experience, having a man you have never seen before in your life call you ‘My Love’ and for a little girl to be calling you her ‘Mommy’, yet stranger still is how I had felt in that moment. While this life was new and this body was not my own, it would appear that it still held within it the essence of her being, for why else would I feel unbearable joy and happiness to see this little girl whom I have never seen before in my life? How would you explain the love and affection I felt for the man, who kiss and tender touch seem to almost wipe my worries away? ‘It might not be so bad after all’ I thought to myself as I slowly began to accept this new life of mine. A loving husband and an adorable daughter, what more could one ask for?

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But of course, as I now know, this life would not last. For despite falling asleep within a warm and happy home, in between my beloved husband and daughter, I woke up somewhere else, I woke up as someone else. I had awoken as a cranky old man, living alone in a dilapidated old house, spending the last of my days with a grumpy old cat. You would think that I would have angushed once more, torn apart by the fact that I would no longer see my husband and daughter, but these feelings never came. For that night when I left her life, her essence and being stayed with it. And now, as an old man wth nothing left to live for, all I feel is bitterness and apathy, lamenting the decisions I have made earlier in life and spiting those who made my life hell.

And so the cycle has begun. I live the life that is not mine, day after day, night after night. Each day I wake as someone new, as somethin new, and as each night I knew I would wake up in a body that is not mine, inhabiting a life that is not mine. Day after day, night after night. A new body, a new life, a new soul, I inhabit them when I wake and I leave them when I sleep. I have seen the best that humanity can be, and I have seen the worst that they have to offer. I have lived lives that one could only find in works of fantasy and I have lived lives as unremarkable and ordinary as can be. I remember them all, for all of them are a part of me. Each body I have inhabited, each home I have dwelled in, each emotions I have felt, each lives I have lived, all of them are my own. 

All of them I remember, all of them, but my own.