He Spent a Year Paying a Doctor to Write Down a Fragile, Unstable Version of Me That Didn’t Exist — So When He Finally Set Me Aside, the Whole World Would Believe I’d Simply Come Apart on My Own

I told her the truth.

“It changes,” I said.

“At first it decides everything.

But in time it learns to sit quietly in a corner of the room, while you go out and build a life it doesn’t get to touch.” He had wanted me hidden away where no one would ever look at me again.

Instead, he made the whole country watch me stand up.

My name is Genevieve Hayes, and I decided, in the end, to take up more space, not less.