I was born with a monster in my chest. I visit an alternate reality in my dreams, a world that hasn't changed since I first visited it--when I was five years old. I am intelligent, intense, imaginative, impossible. My worth is perceived as a limitless gift that is both a blessing and a curse. The parasite that sucks my blood and feeds my brain, the creature that constricts my heart and gives me breath. A beautiful disease, a horrifying pleasure. I am like no one you have ever met and I am everyone you've ever known. I am multifaceted in ways that even I do not fully comprehend and probably never will. Chameleon. My personality is a constant, ever-changing tug-of-war. Bold and beautiful, hidden and homely. I am an irreplaceable but broken toy. A metal that is invaluable but coated in rust. A priceless gem with an underlying fracture. I am unbreakable but have been shattered a hundred times over. My heart is stone, layer upon layer of puckered grey scar tissue that protects something completely pure but never seen. Love still grows there, blood still beats there, life still lives there. My greatest tragedies have produced my greatest triumphs. I am sick, and my sickness is seductive. If you think you know me, if you think you've seen me, if you think you think of me, you are wrong. I am only beginning.