I don't know which parts are me. When everything shattered I lost my inner voice and had to make a new one. I think that process was valuable and important but I might have lost my soul. Or maybe this new one is the same one. Who gets to decide what is will and what is personality. What can't I change for convenience.

My gender I suppose but that's very much a lie. I performed it so long that I lost sight of whoever I might have been. Do I even deserve to matter,even a little? I often wish she understood me but that's not a possibility. So I am left with myself. Why play a game that everyone resents.

I can delude myself into all kinds of things but I can't tell myself why I should keep playing. Validation for that needs to be external.

Things are maybe going to get better.

Probably not.

Do I really need to be here to witness the horrors of the world?

Maybe. Inertia is a hell of a drug.

Our operators tell us they love us. I don't understand. Maybe that's what I'll stick them with. The splinter in their mind reminding them they are loved even if only by the lonely mayfly priestesses. We go onto the pyre. We're so attuned to destruction that we don't even feel our skin crackle and crisp.

Serves you right. The rot at the core of the world is that this is it. This is it and you're blowing it.

What would I do if the game turns from tragedy to unbearable suffering? What do you mean? What suffering is unbearable? The slate can all be wiped clean, the gauge changed, the hologram twisted into a new image.

I don't know how to build myself into something resilient. Maybe I just need to remain protean. Maybe looking for a single solid truth is never going to work. We'll always be shifting and turning, seen edgewise.