I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life-the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. You’d have expected me to enjoy the stillness of closed rooms, take comfort in dull silence, my gaze moving slowly across paper, walls, heavy curtains, thoughts never shifting from what my eyes identified-book, desk, tree, person. If I’d worn glasses I could have passed for smart, but I was too impatient to be truly smart. The terrain of my face was heavy with soft, rumbling acne scars blurring whatever delight or madness lay beneath that cold and deadly New England exterior. I was thin, my figure was jagged, my movements pointy and hesitant, my posture stiff.

The sunlight in the morning illuminated the thin down on my face, which I tried to cover with pressed powder, a shade too pink for my wan complexion. It’s easy for me to imagine this girl, a strange, young and mousy version of me, carrying an anonymous leather purse, or eating from a small package of peanuts, rolling each one between her gloved fingers, sucking in her cheeks, staring anxiously out the window. You might take me for a nursing student or a typist, note the nervous hands, a foot tapping, bitten lip. I looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus, reading some clothbound book from the library about plants or geography, perhaps wearing a net over my light brown hair.

Eileen novel by ottessa moshfegh