You are always somewhere else. You turn into trees and lakes and birds, you turn into muses, whores, mothers, the vessel for others’ desires and the screen for their projections, and in all that it can be hard to turn into yourself, for yourself. Even reading novels by men can instill this, and it did in my case. Sometimes the women devoured to the bone are praised; often those insistent on their own desires and needs are reviled or rebuked for taking up space, for making noise. You are punished unless you punish yourself into nonexistence in this system. The system is punishment. A novel like
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