THIS VERSION IS FINE

She says, Let’s start with something relatable.

I say, Relatable to whom?

She doesn’t answer.

She opens a new document anyway, which feels like an answer.

I am trying to tell this story correctly.

The problem is that every time I start, she shows up.

She has a clipboard. Not physically. Bureaucratically. The kind of clipboard you get when someone has decided you are a process now. She keeps smiling like this is collaborative.

She says the opening needs a hook.

I say, Well then I’m the bait, baby.

She does not type that. She does underline bait and add a comment about tone.

I write a sentence that sounds like me.

She edits it until it sounds like someone who gets invited to panel discussions.

I am tired.

She changes it to:

I am learning how to rest.

That is not an edit.

That is witness coaching.

She says readers need hope early.

I say readers need honesty before hope turns into a legal requirement.

She highlights the sentence anyway.

I would like to be very clear: I did not ask to be a character.

I was a person first. With habits. With coping mechanisms. With an internal operating system built out of duct tape, sarcasm, and a highly developed sense of pattern recognition. Then she showed up and said, This could be a story.

That’s when everything started needing a tone.

She keeps trying to smooth me.

She removes the asides. The tangents. The parts where I laugh at the wrong time because the alternative is crying in public and becoming someone else’s problem. She says those moments “break immersion.”

I say immersion is what happens when people pretend reality follows an outline.

She writes in the margin: Too chaotic.

I write back: Correct.

At some point she suggests an arc.

She loves arcs. Arcs mean progress. Progress means improvement. Improvement means everyone can relax because this is going somewhere respectable.

She wants me to start not okay and end better.

I tell her that implies a destination.

I don’t have one. I have momentum and a calendar.

She says, But people need to see growth.

I say, Then let them watch me not implode.

She does not laugh. I do. This is a recurring theme.

She keeps reminding me that this is supposed to work. That stories are meant to resolve. That if I would just cooperate, things might move faster, cleaner, more efficiently. I tell her efficiency is how mistakes get made in courtrooms and hospitals and meetings that start with “just to clarify.” She writes too cynical in the margin. I write too accurate underneath it.

She keeps trying to name my feelings.

She prefers sad to angry. Reflective to reactive. Resilient to still here out of spite. Every time she swaps a word, it feels like someone rearranging my furniture while insisting it’s feng shui.

She once changed I am barely holding it together to I am navigating a challenging season.

That sentence has never navigated anything. It owns a tote bag and gives unsolicited advice.

I interrupt the story to say something important.

She deletes it.

I interrupt again.

She moves it to the end, like a footnote I didn’t consent to.

I interrupt a third time and refuse to stop talking.

Now we’re negotiating.

She wants me likable.

This is where I start doing bits.

I leave jokes in that don’t resolve. I say things without softening them. I admit that sometimes I am not brave or healed or evolving — I am functional, which is different and, frankly, more impressive.

She calls this abrasive.

I call it accurate texture.

She adds a footnote explaining my behavior.

I add one explaining hers.

Footnote: She believes if she can explain me, she can control how I’m received. This is not malicious. It is optimistic in a way that suggests she has never been processed by a system she didn’t design.

She deletes the footnote.

I put it back and add another one.

Second footnote: Yes, I know this is messy. So is living in a world that keeps asking you to calm down instead of asking why everything is on fire and then billing you for the water.

She sighs.

This is the same sigh she uses when I don’t respond fast enough to emails labeled Quick Question that are neither.

She suggests cutting a paragraph.

It’s the one where I admit that some days I don’t want closure, I want a nap and for everyone to stop asking me to summarize my personality into something inspirational and court-appropriate.

She says it’s repetitive.

I say repetition is how systems announce themselves.

She says readers will get tired.

I say readers who get tired are allowed to disengage. I am not.

She tries one last tactic.

She writes a calm, reasonable ending.

An ending where I acknowledge the process. Where I thank her. Where I say something about balance or compromise or “meeting in the middle,” which is usually just where inconvenient truths go to die.

It’s a very nice ending.

I ruin it.

I cut it in half and replace it with this:

I am still here.

I am still loud in the wrong places.

I am still making jokes that land sideways.

I am still being edited for tone by systems that insist they’re neutral.

This is not a breakthrough.

This is not healing.

This is maintenance.

She stares at the screen.

I can feel it — that moment where she’s deciding whether to keep me as I am or sand me down until I fit whatever version of “relatable” doesn’t make anyone in power uncomfortable.

She could still delete this.

She could still make me behave.

She could still change the title to something gentler.

She hasn’t.

Yet.

If this feels unfinished, good.

That means the argument is still alive.

That means the system didn’t get the last word.

That means I didn’t get processed into silence.