It was in the room.

I had simply been standing in the room so long that I mistook its walls for my own skin.

Chapter 3 — Unsupervised

I spent my childhood shrinking.

But somewhere in college, I made a discovery that changed the shape of my entire life, and it was this: if you are completely ignored, you are also completely unsupervised.

No one in my family ever asked what I was studying, or why, or where it might lead.

No one checked my work, questioned my plans, or took the slightest interest in the machinery of my mind — because in the story they had all agreed to tell, I had no machinery worth examining.