Emily’s Evolution

A woman’s heart is not really such a terribly difficult thing to understand. The key is to simply remember that no matter the circumstance, her heart is always in conflict and once her heart is in conflict, her mind starts trying to make sense of it. She must, with every minute decision in her life, weigh the impacts on herself, her loved ones, the community in which she lives and so on outward until she knows the universe will not suffer more greatly than any satisfaction she may derive from the action she is about to take. This internal processes inevitably results, quite understandably, in the appearance of a rather finicky being.

As a child Emily often wondered what kind of an adult a little girl named Emily would become. To her, this name was reserved for 8 year old girls. She tried to find a role model of the same name, but all roads led back to the same conclusion. Those named Emily either died very young or stayed infantile their entire life. As she passed from her pre-teens into her teens and then into her twenties, she began to consider that, although her parents had given her the name Emily, perhaps she was, in fact, not an Emily at all. Perhaps she was a Jessica or even a Ruth. On occasion, when meeting strangers she was not likely to encounter again, she would try out this other name for a few hours.

At 21 she favored the name Jessica. In Jessica she found that she could be confident and interesting. Jessica was a painter from a broken family. She had spent most of her childhood traveling back and forth between mother and father, both of whom spent most of their time with her explaining each and every fault of the other in hopes of convincing her that the divorce was not their fault. In her youth she accepted that her parents were simply not meant to be together and had decided that, since she was the only tie that bound them together, she would leave the picture as soon as possible allowing her parents to finally find some peace.

In this version of herself, she rarely spoke to her parents. She felt refined and independent. She could make decisions without feeling an impact on others.

She ultimately decided that she was not a Jessica.

After Jessica, came Isabelle, a charming and outgoing former cheerleader that had yet to decide where she was going in life, but was quite certain that the world was her oyster. Isabelle had her heart set on Europe, but in her heart knew the only way that would happen would be to marry rich.

Isabelle did not last long. An Emily was entirely too deep to last long in the skin of Isabelle.

She continued like this for a few years. Her days and most nights would be passed in the shell of Emily, just getting by, but when the occasion presented itself, she’d try on the persona that fit the stranger before her. It was always fun for the first 15 minutes, but, try as she might to be someone else, she always came to the same conclusion. Although she could imagine being another woman and she could invent a thousand lives other than her own, she ultimately could not become anyone other than Emily.