November 10, 2019:
I've become her, of course. She lived in her head, with her fantasy novels and cigarettes and cats. I live in my head, with my failed games and my failed novels and my unrecorded songs. Similar causes: her isolation in her childhood closet, mine in my childhood apartment, both living in fantasies 'cos what else was there to do? At least I had books and wargames. She had nothing at all.
For much of her adulthood she had her fantasy family who accepted and loved her. With them she felt part of more than herself. She adopted a completely false persona of course but that's fine. She was happy with them. In the end they were all dead and she was alone in a place she disliked with her cigarettes and her final cat and the cold gray ocean.
I'm so sorry that I failed her. My biggest failure. I should have been a joy to her but I rejected her in many ways. After a lifetime of her rejecting me, of course. If it were today I'd struggle to exercise more patience. But I know now about depression and anxiety, and I know more of the depth of her traumas as a child.
I'm alone in the mountains in a big house and I'm ok with it. I live in code and fictions. The real world does what it does without me.