I want proof.
I turn until I find an entry that feels… familiar. Not because it matches my crimes. Because it matches my shape.
The handwriting is smaller, cramped, furious. Like the writer had to fight for every inch of space on the page.
The entry begins with a plain line:
She called it therapy.
Then:
She called it help.
Then, in the margin, someone else has written:
She called it ownership.
A third hand has underlined that word twice.
I read on.
It’s about a girl who grew up in a house where love was conditional and silence was currency. A mother who disappeared. A father who performed regret like an actor. A mentor who watched her bleed and took notes.
I turn the page.
There’s a list, and it’s so simple it’s insulting.
betrayal
rage
opportunity
a body no one will miss
Under it, a question in a different ink, softer, almost careful:
What happens to women like us?
My eyes linger on the words.
Not because I feel seen.
Because I feel challenged.
There’s a difference.
People always want a myth. They want to take a woman like me and make her either a monster or a victim, because those are easy boxes. Easy stories.
But this isn’t a story.
This is a system.
This is a lineage.
Someone else has been doing this longer than I have.
Heirs to darkness.
