Someone hung the toilet paper in my bathroom the wrong way. I live alone.

My new studio apartment was tiny, but it was all mine. I could finally afford to live alone. No more sink full of roommates' dirty dishes, no more people eating my leftover Chinese food or watching TV at full volume late into the night. I could even hang the toilet paper roll the right way—overhand, obviously—and it would stay that way. Except it didn't.

I called my landlord, but he said he hadn't been back to the apartment since I moved in, and no one else had a key. I was about to call the police when I realized how insane this would sound. Most people aren't OCD enough to understand how completely impossible it would be for me to have hung the wrong-way toilet paper myself and not realized, or forgotten about it. I did a careful sweep of my 400-square-foot domain, but nothing else was out of place. I knew no one would take me seriously, but I also knew someone else had been in my apartment.

Then my favorite hoodie went missing, right out of my closet. Once again, even if I could've brought myself to file a police report over a cheap sweatshirt that was nearly old enough to drive a car, I knew already what they'd say--that I must have just left it somewhere and forgotten. But I also knew that wasn't true.

It went on like that. Lights were left on. My copy of The House of the Spirits, which I was only halfway through, was moved from my nightstand to my bookshelf. Someone even took out the trash one time when I wasn't home. I started making a list of these creepy occurrences on my phone. Then one day when I went to add the latest--a vase of flowers showing up on my kitchen table, with no card or anything--I couldn't find the note on my phone anymore. That freaked me out the most, especially because I used a simple sticky note widget that wasn't synced with my laptop or any other device. Someone must have gotten into my phone, which was never more than a few feet from my body and was locked with my fingerprint.

By then I was hardly sleeping, listening intently at night to every footstep passing by my apartment in the hallway, every twig scratching the window in the breeze. Who would do something like this? Who even could pull off something like this? The only person I'd invited over so far was a guy I met on Tinder who didn't sleep over and seemed to be avoiding me now. Had I gone to the bathroom while he was here? I must have. Was I gone long enough for him to copy my key? Maybe?

I bought a used doorbell camera, but the only person I saw going in and out was me. It was an old building; when I couldn't sleep, I searched for articles about someone who might have died in it. When I did sleep, I dreamed of shadows moving around my apartment while I lay in bed, exposed and unable to move.

Finally I called my mom in tears and told her I didn't feel safe here. She told me to come home, and I did. I packed a small bag, hoping this wouldn't be for too long. My boss agreed to give me some time off. In my childhood bed that night, I slept for ten hours straight, and woke up thinking maybe everything was going to be OK. I just needed rest, and time to figure this out.

That's when I started losing time. I told myself I'd call my landlord before the next month's rent was due and see about an extension, or maybe breaking my lease. And then suddenly it was three days into the new month, and he was calling me. My mom would get mad at me for not remembering things she swore she'd told me. I broke the nail on my index finger below the quick where it really hurt. The next day, the bandaid was gone and the nail had grown out.

I was starting to panic, but I was too embarrassed to say anything. In a matter of months, I'd gone from finally getting my own place to living back at home and losing my mind. My mom kept looking at me with that unbearable concerned-mom face, but she didn't say anything. I started spending more time in my room with the door closed.

I don't know how much time I'd lost when I woke up in restraints in the hospital with bandages on my arms. I started screaming as the pain crept in and I realized I couldn't sit up. There was a nurse, then a needle, then darkness.

I woke up again in an armchair, in a small office with soft lamplight. My mom was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and talking to a woman I'd never seen before. "It was her stepfather," she told the woman, then looked over at me with a face that seemed like it had broken in half. "Honey I—I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

Know what?, I thought to myself, but my mouth couldn't form words. Whose stepfather? What is she talking about? But there was a knot in my stomach, as if my body heard something I couldn't.

The strange woman turned to me. "Sarah?" she said softly. "How does it feel to hear that?"

Sarah? She must be confused. "My name is Helen," I told her.

My mom let out a sob and buried her face in her hands. The room was spinning. I dug my fingers into the arms of the chair as if to keep myself from falling off into space and nothingness.

I lost a lot of time after that. I remember seeing bare tree branches through the window of that office, and then suddenly all the trees outside my bedroom window were covered in green. Yellow prescription bottles littered my nightstand, and the air was hot and thick. I cried then, thinking of time slipping through my fingers, my life slipping away. My mom came in and stroked my hair. "Sarah?" she said softly, hopefully. I nodded, not wanting to see her shatter again.

I'm not Sarah. I'm someone she's trying to get rid of. And she's winning. She has everyone on her side. I'm desperate to hear someone say my name, but I pretend to be her so I can hold on a little longer. I'm afraid to sleep again, not knowing if or when I'll wake up. I've been up for hours writing this, hoping to carve an indelible piece of myself somewhere she can't find it and delete it. I want someone out there to know me. To remember me.

My name was Helen. I wasn't anyone exceptional, but I was happy. I loved pork lo mein and magical realism. I usually paid my rent on time, and I tried to remember to turn off the lights when I left the house. I thought I had people who loved me. I thought I had the rest of my life ahead of me. I didn't want to disappear.