You don't wake up.

You can't wake up anymore, you realize, because you no longer have a body. You can only watch as a stranger wakes up in your body and she blunders around carelessly, wide-eyed and clueless.

It's pathetic. It's infuriating. It's—

You want to smash her head into the shiny metal handle of your old dresser. It doesn't matter that it was your head, once— it doesn't make any difference. You can't even call your body your own anymore, because each expression this Stranger makes is so— different. Uncanny. It's so totally divorced from your own scowls and glares and sharp-edged smiles. This girl has taken your body and rendered it into a toothless little housepet, something to be doted on and condescended to. She is the antithesis of your very being.

And yet—

Everybody loves her.

Oh, how they love her. How they adore her— if you still had a body, you would have sneered. How ridiculous; all it took was some smiles, some groveling, for the people who despised you so much to start licking the boots of the person in your body, the person that they think is still you.

How fucking ridiculous.

You want to tear their jaws away from their faces. You want to peel the skin from their bodies and wear their appearance like a change of clothes and ruin their lives and make them watch helplessly, uselessly, as you replace them and nobody notices, nobody cares— no, they care, of course, but they're happy about it. And the thing they fear most is that you'll return, the real you. The thing that they hope for the most is that the person who stole your life stays, and you disappear forever.

Ha.

Whatever. It’s not like you loved them, anyway. It’s not like you weren’t cruel. It’s not like you would feel differently, if you were them. But still—

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Ah, I don’t know. Why do I feel this way?

…you don’t want to know.

(You don’t want to think about it.)

You watch on.

Sometimes it's like you're floating outside your body. Sometimes you're looking through your own eyes again, but you can't control your movements; it's dizzying, and nauseating, and you hate it but at least when you're in that state you can still feel— fabric on skin, the taste of food, the air moving past. When you’re outside your body, you can't feel a thing, not even the temperature.

Honestly, you're not sure which one is worse.

The girl in your body— you wonder if she misses her old life. You wonder if she misses her name, her body, her family and friends. You want to ask her, what’s your name? Who are you— why? Why is it you? Why couldn’t—? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why—

You want to ask her, was it worth it? Are you happy? If you had a choice, would you choose this life? Or would you go back to where you were?

Because the day that she arrived and the day that you, in a way, died, she couldn’t have known what was happening. No, she was just as confused as you, just as clueless as you had been. And then she had started spouting something about some plot and something about the main characters and male lead and you had wondered, for a few long days, by God, has my body been taken over by some sort of lunatic?

“Oh,” the girl says now, turning to your fiance. Or is he her’s, now that you’re dead?

He looks infatuated. It’s enough to make you want to puke.

They smile at each other— ha. And he used to hate you so much; what was so different about this girl, that she was so loved by those around her? What made her so different from you?

What was it about you, that made you unloveable? Was it your temper? Your jealousy? Your foolish greed, your longing for things that could never belong to you?

You don’t know. You can never know.

You watch as your body turns away, as the man you once loved turns with it; you watch, and you want to laugh, because haven’t you dreamed of this moment? Didn’t you long desperately for that loving gaze to be directed towards you—?

But in the end it took another person wearing your skin. It took an absolute stranger replacing you. It took being ripped from your body, displaced from your life— it took giving up everything you ever had.

In the end, it took—

No. That’s not quite it.

In the end, you never were loved at all.