Author's note:  Okay, this story might suck...I just came up with it.  It's told from Buffy's perspective.  She's been awake all night and she is exhausted, but she can't sleep.  So, these are her thoughts that are keeping her up.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

            I didn't ask for any of this.  I just wanted to be a normal girl.  I wanted to grow up in a normal family in a normal town with all the normal crap everyone else I knew had.  Unfortunately, I wasn't normal.  I was "The Chosen One."  I was the one who was picked to stand against "the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness."

            No one asked me what I wanted.  If they had, what might I have told them?  Oh yeah, how about...I wanted to be a cheerleader like my best friends were?  Or that I wanted a father who would stick around, instead of the absolute loser that I would sickeningly enough miss no matter what went on?  I wanted my Mom to live to old age.  I wanted to date normal guys who weren't over two hundred years old.

            Of course, who could expect a normal life for a person with the name of Buffy?  Normal girls don't get that name.  Sure, I like it, but it's still weird.  Of course, my friends would tell you I'm weird, too.

            I guess anyone who has the strength of a legion of men would be considered weird.  On the other hand, it could be that I've died twice.  Maybe that's the reason they see me as weird.  Or it could just be that I skipped almost every class every day in high school and I still got over a 1400 on my SAT?  Maybe that whole thing was just luck.  Oh, or how about my sister who was made by some wacky monks out of energy that opened dimensions.  No, I know what it is.  It's the vampire thing...or the punning thing that I do after I kill the vamps.

            Whatever.

            My only true love in life was a vampire.  He loses his soul when we have sex.  I'm pretty sure that that isn't normal.  Of course, sex can make things complicated in any kind of relationship.

            One of my closest friends got a kick out of killing people...okay, so more than one.  The love of my life liked to kill people.  My best friend went on a rampage after her girlfriend died.  The friend I'm thinking of is another girl who is a slayer.  Her name is Faith.  She was closer to me than I'd ever let on, and she betrayed me.  Then, she switched bodies with me, which sucked since the Watchers Council wanted to have me (in her body) killed.

            Oh well...

            Why can't I sleep?  I think it's almost daybreak...Another day of violence and evil things needing to be killed.  Another day of me taking on the role of leader.  Another day of realizing that the potentials worship Faith over me because she "embraced her inner badness."  Another day of the unspoken angst between us.  Another day of me plotting ways of taking my angst out on her, only to succumb to my conscience telling me not to hurt her.

            Ugh!  My stupid alarm is going off and I haven't gotten any sleep.  If I were fifteen, like some of these girls, I would be asking my Mom for five more minutes.  Of course, I'm not fifteen, and my Mom is dead, so that won't work.

            I have to look in the mirror to see if I'm still alive.  Oh my God!  Why is my face wet?  Why am I crying?  This would all be so much different if only I had a normal life.  Maybe then my face would be dry.

            Why couldn't the mirror lie to me?  Why couldn't it tell me for just one damn moment in my life that I was normal again?  Why couldn't it let me be Buffy Summers, student at Northwestern?  Or Buffy Summers, engaged to some really great guy who'd graduated from some really great school?  Why did it tell me that I was Buffy Summers "final protector of the Hellmouth"?