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I haven't always been Frances. She came to be as a hommage to the first someone who told me that if I wanted to write, and enjoyed to write I should go on writing, keep writing. It was said without having read anything I'd ever written. It was genuinely said, what I very much doubted when another someone (the first someone to actually read something) had told me my poems were "well written". I still don't know what those words meant.
Frances nestled herself in my head. When the person who gave her her name dissapeared from view, she stayed and urged me to come up with new stories. There were other characters that wanted to live as well, and there was one that wanted more. I didn't write. Frances did. Through a thesis and essays and exams she sought her way out. She told me about memory and about how a memory is made up of stories. She taught me how to write like Frances, talk like Frances, act like Frances – until I had become Frances.
No way back for me now. She had found a little window to struggle through into a big, wide, and extremely harsh world. She had discovered that I liked to hide behind her face, that the words she whispered to me meant less if indeed her name was under it. I gave Frances a way into this world, and she gave me a way out of it.
I'm not completely gone though. Being the vessel I join her on a silly ride through uncharted territory. Frances does things I wouldn't do, so I hit the breaks and take over. "We are not allowed," I tell her, but I feel her poke and sting on the inside. She's struggling back up. Angry and bad tempered she roars at me. I feel her like a wave of nausea and want to curl up in a ball to wait for her anger to go away. Instead she lashes out at my inertia. I am not allowed to sit and wait for nothing to happen. "We are not allowed," her words hit me like only a wet towel can hit you. Fuck.
Frances cannot be stilled. Her hunger for recognition is insatiable. Before my fingers hit the keys I hear her editing every sentence I come up with. She can only live with the best, because only then will come the attention we deserve. How I too hunger for it, the attention only Frances can get me.

P. wants something to read.

It's half past 8 and P.'s bored. "I want something to read," he declares, "the newspaper shop at the end of the street is still open." When he returns he tells he has done one very good deal: "The biggest pile of paper for the least amount of money." My dear boyfriend has bought two Elles for the price of one and I'm gonna snag one to read while watching Cruel Intentions.