Shadows and She

What was she?
A mere shadow of the people around her.
She could easily slip in to the skins of those whom she interacted with every day of her life. She could copy - no, borrow - their mannerisms, their acts, their smile. And their words. Especially their words. She slipped in comfortably in these skins and fluttered around, portraying it as her own, till she got tired and found a better skin to borrow. Not only this, she could easily switch from one skin to another whenever she wanted to, whenever the situation called for it.

She was not a good actress, because actresses are supposed to portray someone else. She mingled in these skins, her own self. They became her and she, them. Her original self was reduced to a mimicry of a thousand different originals. She had 'borrowed' set of principles and beliefs. Even her sense of morality was stolen from someone. She carried within her, forged ideals and mimicked passions.

What really was her passion?
Everything and nothing. She would be a writer someday, when her peers' works started getting noticed. She would become a painter, an artist one day, when a movie on painters and artists was made. She could be a reader, an academician, a daredevil - anything - as long as it was the 'in' thing to be. All that mattered to her that people would notice the shining star she really was, the star she so desperately was yearning to become. She would crack jokes and pass witty remarks she had overheard in a private conversations so people would think she's funny. She prayed that they'd think she was funny.

And yet, she was so amused by the people she thought copied her. And she thought that a lot! For her, people always tried to copy the way she dressed, the way she talked, the catchphrases she used that she had borrowed from another someone sitting far away. They amused her and made her proud of what she was. There was nothing more thrilling than to be a trendsetter.

What will happen when she is laid bare of all these skins she has acquired over a stretch of time? What if, one day, she is forced to come back to whatever is left of her own, pure self? Right now, she could be anything and everything. But what if all of it had to stop all of a sudden like she knew would? What then?

She was too afraid to answer that.