I shook my head. “It’s not like that. He understands me so well that it was easy for me to convince myself that he was a projection of my subconscious. He gets my sense of humor. He’s so fucking clever. But I thought he was the part of me that loved myself, you know? Like, my self-loathing was so palpable that I had to create an external figure that didn’t judge me, that helped me think through things without making me feel bad about myself. He was the part of me—well, what I believed was the part of me—that thought I was worth keeping alive. And he did.”
