“You’re not doing enough.”

💌: Said the voices from the portraits in the hall I built.

“You’re not doing enough.” The words follow me into the hall I walk through every day. Not a real or tangible one. Not marble, not gilded. It’s one that’s built and polished inside my head.

The floorboard creaks with memory and splinters. The walls are lined with mirrors of fame. And hanging between them are portraits of the women I will never be, but cannot stop measuring myself against.

And I walk through the hall, every day, without failure. It’s one thing I’m good at. Here’s the list of a few prominent figures hung like mirrors in the hall.

The first frame belongs to The Whimsical Girl. I found her during lockdown, when the world was just me and my four walls, finding comfort through the borderless world on screens. She’d sing covers with a lightness that felt like understanding. She’d write poems and draw Roald Dahl–style illustrations, dressed as though she was born out of sepia tones. She studied in Lancaster, stitched her life together with books and fairy lights, and still found time to be a Swiftie, just like me. She is the version of Taylor Swift who doesn’t need the stadiums — a smaller star, but dazzling enough for me to orbit around. She calls herself a mirrorball, just like I do. But I don’t believe that —…