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I’m starting this piece of by giving my readers a trigger warning. If you are reading this, be warned, for there will be triggers.
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Warned? Gone?
Please go away.
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It’s about time I explained the difference between Nessy and Amber.
Amber is who I was. A person who went through school in a daze of good grades and false smiles. Someone who hid their depression well enough, by surrounding herself with people, by being an extrovert. She had emotional scars from her first stepfather, an abusive man who once made her sleep on the metal frame of a couch because he wanted the cushions on his bed. A man who’d left her on mom’s porch late at night while mom was still moving to the new house. The nice house.
Amber was prone to self harm. In middle and high school, she’d flogged herself, caused multiple rope burns and scars on her body. Her favorite form of self harm was tightening a rope around her waist, because she thought herself fat. No matter how smart she was, no matter how nice she was, apart from Anne and Steven, there were bullies, rude comments, gross guys in high school who’d corner her alone and tell her that they wanted to “relieve her of her virginity” since the only people who’d find her worth dating were the guys who never bathe and still pick their asses in class.
High school was about the time Nessy started to surface.
Amber was a water type. She went with the flow, she agreed with everything, she shows up when other people are around. She’s the one who dated people, and eventually gave up her virginity because she started to think those guys were right.
That no one would love her the way she wanted to be loved.
In college, Amber went from one kind of self harm to another. Emotionally torturing herself and others. Destroying relationships with random flashes of anger and aggression. An addiction to hatred and sorrow, thinking she didn’t deserve what she had.
Sophomore year, she started cutting. This lasted until January, where she was asked to move out, to leave the friendships she’d destroyed.
Three short months with former friends, ending in that January.
Amber tried to kill herself, just as she’d killed her friendship. 23 asprin and two shots of raspberry vodka. It almost worked until she woke up, her entire head ringing like a cathedral. She started puking what looked like coffee grounds, and was rushed to the hospital.
The day she left the hospital, she rented her new apartment and moved in.

Amber died.

Nessy arrived in the new apartment, a young woman, set on living on their own. Nessy is nonbinary, the part that never felt quite comfortable in that body. Nessy doesn’t have periods because of birth control, Nessy makes friends online, has jokes, has datemates online who don’t expect anything of them.

Nessy still has depression. A mental condition still exists in the body it inhabits. But, unlike Amber, they were able to deal with it healthily, find outlets that worked.

The ghost of Amber still returns, that much is true. She’s the one who appears whenever I smoke pot, or drink alcohol. She likes to come back occasionally, say hi, be social.

But Nessy is who I am now. I am still at fault for the mistakes I made when I was Amber. But Amber is no longer who I am.

Now I am fire. Decisions don’t come easily when I’m with others, because social anxiety makes choosing hard. You could always make an incorrect choice.

But alone, as Nessy, I choose to drink coffee, I find friends in shared fandoms. As Nessy, I am a pokemon trainer. As Nessy, I am a Brony.

As Nessy, I have friends I care heavily about.

Only this quarter, as I say goodbye to college, was I able to admit in public (not social media, that’s internet) that I prefer Nessy now. That I am Nessy now.

It’s satisfying to say goodbye to Amber.

You can still call me that, especially if we are smoking together or drinking together. Because then, I am Amber.

But the sober me? The me you read, the me you see day to day in public? That’s Nessy.