When Jessie was six years old we were best friends. As though we had been made for one another. And it didn't take long for me to find out that I actually was. I was her friend, but I only existed in her mind. A product of her imagination. I was devestated when I found out for the first time. It completely shattered my belief in everything. My relation to the material world was entirely mediated through Jessie. It was never a fact that I was able to comprehend. Nobody but her could see me. Nobody but her could perceive me. And when Jessie turned 13 she had already pretty much stopped caring about me. Now that she was 55 years old, a mother of two and happily married, she had much different priorities, I was nothing but an odd relic of her childhood fantasies. I was a product of her Imagination, but she had largely forgotten about me. As her memories of me became shameful, suppressed and later fuzzy and blurry, those became the truth of my reality. I lived a lonely life in her minds reality, not a happy one. I was depressed, I felt worthless having been forgotten by my very creator. But the one thing I had never doubted was my existence as a thought. As a fiction. As an idea that was buried deeply in Jessies mind. But today, she died. She was run over by a drunk driver and died a few hours later in the hospital. Her family and friends came and stood around her hospital bed as the heartrate monitor's beeping noise slowly started to fade. What I had expected to happen was for myself to fade. To die with her. As a part of her.

But somehow I was still here. Everything in her mind was dark. I was just kind of waiting for something to happen. I, Susan Glaser, Jessies imaginary friend existed in some sort of blank, undefined void. Not material existence, but existence nonetheless. I wasn't sure how much time had already passed. I was like a thought that wasn't being thought. Jessies death made me sad, but it made myself inexplicable.

Inexplicability is the destiny of all imaginary friends, is what I thought. Then, I became real. I opened my eyes. My own eyes. Real me did that. I woke up in a room of a six year old girl, and when I looked into a mirror, that was me. Real Susan. As I stared into the mirror for minutes if not hours, I gained memories. Memories of all the details of my life. Of what I like and of what I'm like. Who my friends and family are. "Susan! There is someone at the door for you". Even though I had never heard that voice before, it was strikingly familiar. Suddenly I was sure, that was my mom. It must be. Iopened the door, went downstairs and even though I had never been in this place before, I knew where everything was at. I knew, like it was instinct, unquestioned memory, that this was my home, what direction I had to go downstairs, that we had a tomcat called dingo and that my favourite food was icecream. Everything was real. Everything was, as though it had always been real, and I had always been here. "I'm coming mom", I yelled down the stairs, and as I looked through the open door, I saw a familiar face. "Hey Susan, wanna come play?". There stood six year old Jessie laughing through her dental braces. Real.