Dedicated to a Decidedly Unpleasant She.

Maybe I’m an earthworm. I do believe that would make her the robin, cherished and adored by the outside world while being a distinct nuisance to me behind closed doors. Is it so wrong for me to want my humble existence to be predator (and bird) free?

Or maybe, if this were Mean Girls, she’s Regina and I’m Cady, still avoiding being Plastic and finding distasteful the games of maintaining social hierarchy.

Or perhaps this isn’t a direct rivalry. Maybe I am a fish and she is a water-skipper. Not entirely enemies, but by nature, I will go deeper than she could ever live to see.

In her story, she’s probably still Pinocchio and I am somewhat Jiminy. Life lessons by example, given and ignored. Fully unappreciated until (at earliest) act four (or maybe three). But most likely? Maybe we are two different characters making cameo appearances in everyone else’s movies, and where my story arc ends, her’s is just beginning. From being extras to supporting the leading character in proximity, we are likely not even in the same genre nine times out of ten, and maybe that’s how we’re meant to be.

As tempting as it is to imagine her as my main obstacle, rival for a coveted office or my love triangle’s Member No. 3, it is most likely that she is simply a character, temporarily placed in my story.

But one thing is certain. Not every Tom Sawyer necessitates a Huckleberry. Not every “girl next door” has to face a Queen Bee. And not every heroine needs to fight a dragon lady. I refuse to be tied to her, just as she would hate being tied to me.

So she can be a water-skipper. And I’ll be a fish, holding communion with the very depths of beauty, and I’ll be grateful when she skips by, leaving me to find a peace that only comes at the marriage of accepting her existence and refusing to let it define me.

I am my own heroine, and she can’t take that from me.