wen | d10 ; fin

Truth be told, there are definitely some latent anger issues within me which I've been struggling to contain as much these days. I was taking a class for it when I was in District Five on my last trip, but it was more of a group-healing type of thing, where everyone sits around in a circle and recounts practically every mistake they've ever made, uses the fact that they couldn't control their anger as an excuse, and then spends the rest of the session talking about how their anger is not their own fault. It never is. It's always an asshole parent, or a smug boss, or a bastard boyfriend's fault. I don't need to find the source of my anger- it's pretty obvious- and I'm literally not allowed to talk about it with any amount of authentic detail or I could quite possibly be killed.

Why? Because these strangers- these complete nobodies- they all know me as Jasmine, and they all think I'm like them. I'm not. No amount of telling them incomplete truths would fix it. I'm a snake in the grass, a fraud, a complete liar. An angry liar, but a liar nonetheless. I really tried to be as honest as possible while remaining vague, though. They know I have mommy issues. I even felt cheeky enough to pepper in a quick, "She's constantly asking me to be somebody else," which garnered lots of nods of understanding, a few hushed exactly's- I think one girl even pointed at me with widened eyes like I'd just summarized everything she'd ever felt. I dunno, though, I guess I still wasn't honest enough for it to work. I mean, obviously. Because I'm still fucking mad all the time.

I can feel it coming over me sometimes, the rage. It's like a cloud looming overhead and blocking out the sun. When the woman who raised me hands me my newest case only two weeks after I've returned home, when I'm whisked away to District Four to make some boy with a type of fish as a last name give me some of his father's hard-inherited wealth, when I'm sitting on a train reminding myself that I am called Chloe this time and I'm here from District Six to study fish migration patterns- the rage warns me. It threatens me, even. As I clean my cupid's bow of red lipstick and laugh at jokes I don't find funny and wear the ugliest dress I have ever seen, the rage curls my hands into fists: you're going to scream soon, it tells me, if you do not hit something.

I almost never do.

They told me that it helps to have something to look forward to- to focus on that instead of the things which make me angry. But honestly- what do I really have to look forward to? Seeing my face printed onto forged documents again? Lying my way into some privileged elite's wealth? No, of course not. Returning to the home of the woman who raised my siblings and I? You'd think. Truth is it's what I dread most in some ways.

I have my reasons- the rage is the first because I hate the person it makes me and it is never more present than when I am home. I do and say stupid things. And then I have to apologize and I fucking suck at apologizing. Or, I guess, feelings in general.

Secondly, the woman who raised us is not actually our mother. She stole us. Obviously we had always known something felt off, but then one night she just tossed it out there in the middle of a conversation. Casually. Like it was nothing. Like it was weather. None of us know who our real parents are, or even which fucking District we are from. She told us our names are clues, and take it from me: all clues were not created fucking equally.

The third reason is also the most secret. When I am home, I am supposed to just be... me. But I don't know who that is anymore.

I don't know if I ever did.

They say that they all know me and it's just incredibly frustrating to feel like everyone else understands me better than I can ever understand myself. I guess that's why part of me prefers when I'm away. I can be whoever I want to be when I'm gone. Maybe through figuring out who I'm not I can narrow down who I am in the process. Other than the anger. Other than the lies. But then, I suppose my fear is that maybe, just maybe that's all there is.