Fear is a tricky thing. She lurks everywhere, but doesn’t always show her face. She is pretty, at first glance with green eyes, ebony hair, soft features. But when you look closer, you can see that her pallid face is riddled with scars, markers of abrasions from a past life, or close-calls in battle. The other night, as my mother convulsed and gasped for air, fear came to visit me. She was perched above my head and she pulled me down to the ground, dragging ragged breaths from my airways as my lungs and chest burned. That night, I was reminded that I will one day rot in the earth and become part of the dirt. I was reminded that it is easy to get lost in myself, ruminating about the “what-ifs” and the “what-could-be’s”. I try to forget how fear made me feel that night, but it is etched into the tapestry. I try to restitch the tapestry, to start fresh with a new one—it is impossible. My mind’s misgivings are plentiful and I am reminded of them when fear strikes. She induces physiological and mental changes that hold me captive in my mind’s prison. In the moments she arrives, I am reminded of the phrase, “It’s easier said than done,” as it embodies everything about how I felt then. There is nothing effortless about letting go of a person, a memory, a place. The mechanical aspect is easier; you walk away from the person, you unfurl your fingers after clenching your fist so tightly that your knuckles are white and your hand trembles when you reopen your hand. But everything else about letting go makes it harder to do.

They used to say, “You are so alike” or “You two are the same”. Their pretext for uttering such words was valid, but they often said these things because they believed saying them would incite change. We had wronged them—I had wronged them, and their anger was warranted. But their words and my so-called doppelgänger’s actions seeped into my lungs, their noxious fumes nearly choking me. Though once amorphous, these substances took shape, clawing at my ribs and crushing my chest, their appendages begging for release. My doppelgänger is merely a doppelgänger in the way we are perceived, in the way we act. I no longer act the way she does, because time has taught me to admit when I am wrong, to come to terms with who I am, to be grateful for what I have. I move my hand up to the crown of my head and run my fingers through my hair and the girl staring back at me would do the same; my doppelgänger, however, cannot act in unison with me. We do not share a face, or eyes, or a nose. We think differently—different beings inhabiting the same place but living in distinct worlds. The beast within my chest has grown weaker and more reticent, timid and tired, over the weeks and months. But the ache of longing remains. I used to understand my doppelgänger as well as I understand the young woman in the mirror who smiles upon remembering shared laughter or playful arguments about the disputable beauty of dandelions. But now, she is a stranger.