I think she hated us. I think—I think when you love a version of a person that isn't real, it makes you hate the version of them that exists in the real. Their truth. We said "flower doll" not because that's how we saw you, but because it's what we knew she saw you as. An eternity to have all of your complexity, all of your possibility, all of your dreams folded into an idyllic paradise where you would be punished for the most minor infraction. Where you had to supplicate yourself and pray to have a child? Our immoral lives given to us, and in exchange, we gave up the ability to have freedom, to make our own families, our own lives, our own cities, our own stories. Everything was hers. What is that other than hate dressed in flowers, sparkling light, blossoming vines, wrapped like garlands around the body of a being that loathed what we might be without her? It feels awful to hear, but I think you're right.
