The words echoed in her head.
"Who are you, and what have you done with my friend?"
The voice was what stuck out. She remembered the tone and temper. An old friend. Worth taking seriously.
And she was stuck, inside her own head and in at least a few ways. "Well?" she wondered. "Who am I? What did I used to want? Why did I stop wanting it? What do I want now? How long have I been like this?"
All questions with baffling implications. All questions she was clueless with how to even start to answer. All questions she couldn't avoid.
"I am who I've been made. I chose to let those choices go." Sinking into one corruption after the next had felt so effortless. She came to expect it. A cherished toy for awhile, a new plaything. Then, after awhile, not so new. Not as uncomplicated. In need of maintenance. Left to pick up it's own pieces till someone else saw what could be repaired, what could be seduced, what could be molded to suit the moment. Changed, used, broken. Fixed again. The breaking makes the repairs a little harder each time. Makes the next hobbyist to come along to go down the rabbithole of all the spikes left over from the half finished repair, all the parts no longer manufactured because they simply had no market. Like a pigeon in a world of texting. Antiquated, useless unless you know what to look for. Fewer and fewer do. And there seems to be less and less to look at.
He hadn't been asking about all that though. She wouldn't have known where to start with that either. He had been asking how the awkward stoner who was a backpacking guide now had tits and 4.0 in an engineering program.
What had she done with him?
She didn't grow how she imagined. She carved herself from the remains of every wound. The days might blur to months, but the changes stay. The other voices. The more recent ones, the ones that had tried.
"It's all good for me. It's always been like this."
The changes weren't bad. and while it took more to put herself back together each time the cycle started again, she started noticing that she was repairing *herself*. It took longer it was harder, but she started to see what fit from angles outside perspectives couldn't.
She was getting fixed by others less because she was learning to be more selective about who she'd let change her and what changes she'd accept. What would fit the mold she put together.
"Give in. Obey. It's worth it. Be worth it."
Those words still felt good, but less relevant. Heard defiantly, and reframed internally.
"Accept where your choices led you, and who you chose to let lead you here."
She was still learning she was scarred, not broken. And she wasn't about to let that go, without a fight.
She'd rather be sought after and well maintained, looking for more, not begging for help.
If someone wanted her submission again, it would be taken, and mutually earned.
But however she got there, she was practically stronger than she started.
And she was choosing where to go next.