"Like fleas or the smell of cheap cologne, she is hard to get rid of. Smiling, smug, arms crossed, her pixie-toes tap out a tap out a metal rhythm that sounds like the smack of surgical tools falling onto a metal try. Like genius or sorrow she has curled up inside me and censors no evil, no criticism.

Sometimes she's British. Sometimes she is a poet. Sometimes she has a drawling southern accent when she mocks me. Other times she is long-nailed and pure JAP. She's got a rough cat's tongue and a debutante smile. She's got a Chanel bag, and outdrink me any day, and is the skinniest girl I know. But she is always, always right.

She likes to skip around and wear transparent victorian nightgowns even on the coldest nights, in order to mock my shivering mortality.

Occasionally, late at night, she is kind: she lights my cigarettes, pours me drinks, and waits quietly for some mutual banter to emerge.

But more and more, she resembles a lion-woman: her hungry iron gaze is trained on me, never wavering. Her eyes penetrate; she is always prepared, always ready to pounce on the slightest vulnerability. When I stumble on the street, she laughs: proof. But when I slip into my clothes, and they hang a little looser, she pats my back and hands me an extra sweater, my lion self.

She is incomplete, a succubus: trigger-happy, toilet-mouthed, knife-wielding, blue and white and sometimes green in the face from screaming, from telling me all I cannot have. When I manage to beat her down, tie her into a chair on the far side of the room, get her to eat some food, she smiles her sanguine, toothless grin. She starves proudly, waits, like a saint, she waits for death by fire or baptism.

--'This is when' she spits, when it is three o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep from hunger

She is holy, wholly my own, and when I reach out to touch her image in my face, she hovers an inch or so before my skull. Then she flicks her tongue out at me like the enraged lion she is; she snaps my fingers between her feline jaws; a barrage of dead spiders, splinters of wood, and bone.

--'This is when I love you the most' "

Even after I had finished reading the book "Skinny" by Ibi Kaslik, these two pages out of all 256 were what stood out the most to me. Like a poem or a catchy song, I had them stuck in my head for weeks-- or at least parts of them. Everything from this excerpt, in my opinion, is beautiful, real, raw, and completely and utterly heart-breaking. This girl that Giselle describes is everything she is, desires to be, or fears the most in the world.

This girl is her.

She is each fragment of her imagination.

She is her perfect self and her weakest self

Her beautiful self, and her hideous self.

She is her conscience and confidence or lack thereof.

What I think is so interesting about this is the whole concept of a war against yourself, of you being your own worst enemy, of your greatest fear being yourself-- what you can or cannot do to or for yourself. I know that this is something I've experienced- maybe not as deeply or vividly as Giselle, but an experience is an experience, right? Though I've never felt an image like this one so graphically or robustly, I know what it's like to be afraid of yourself or what you've done or become, and I think that most others do as well whether they realize it or not.

Some may think that the notion of battling yourself seems silly. Now, think about it some more. You know yourself better than anyone or anything else in the whole world. You know every single strong point and each and every weakness. You know what makes you vulnerable and what will have no affect at all. You know what has happened to you and what hasn't. You know what you want and what you fear. You've spent more time with yourself than anyone. You could navigate your mind or your heart with your eyes closed, you could even do it asleep.

And, you do.

Every day.

Which is, when you think about it, the key to defeating anyone- knowing every single nook and cranny of their inner workings like the back of your hand.

And that is what's so terrifying about a battle against yourself-- you will never win.