Charlotte Sometimes

And, she thought uncomfortably, what could happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were youself, if tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth? Would she know how to be, how to feel like, Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that?

She remembered looking in a mirror once and trying to draw herself, how after she had been staring at them for a little while her features seemed no longer to make her face or any face. They were just a collection of eyes and nose and mouth. Perhaps if you stared at anyone like that their faces would disintegrate in the same way, till you could not tell whether you knew them or not, especially, of cource, if there was no reason for them not to be who they said they were.

It was like being in a river, holding things dry above her head, only it was mind and sense she tried to hold, not clothes.