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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff

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Speaker 1: I've never told your protection of iHeart Radio and it

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Speaker 1: is time for another edition of Smindy Fiction and it

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Speaker 1: as is perfect from Holidays. This is one comes with

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Speaker 1: a trigger warning. So everybody, Holidays, here's a dark fiction

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Speaker 1: for you. It's hard to describe, but it does. It

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Speaker 1: does include, uh, sexual assault and violence mentioned, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't really go into it. But it also deals with

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Speaker 1: the trauma of those things and how that can just

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Speaker 1: ripple out and impact all of your life. So this

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Speaker 1: was something I wrote in high school and we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: some of the reasoning behind it after we do the reading.

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Speaker 1: As always, this is something we're trying. It's new, but

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Speaker 1: don't worry, like our regular content isn't going to change.

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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm holding your hand on this journey,

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Speaker 1: like it's all right. We're doing like sex in the City, Watch,

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Speaker 1: We're doing a bunch of new things. Math. I feel

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Speaker 1: like we have to, you know, just let that has

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Speaker 1: been weird. I feel like we need to end it

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Speaker 1: with a bang and then kind of go ahead and

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Speaker 1: preface by the way. Changes are coming, not huge changes,

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Speaker 1: just a few new things. Because we're about to lose

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Speaker 1: our minds. So we're bringing you a Sex in the

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Speaker 1: City watch through and some fiction. But it's not nothing

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Speaker 1: else is changing. We're just trying some new things and

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Speaker 1: we have to you enjoy it. And as always, if

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Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for new segments we should try,

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Speaker 1: we would love to hear about it. We are we're

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Speaker 1: interested in trying new things. And thanks. It's always to

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Speaker 1: Christine for her amazing work on this one. These fiction

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Speaker 1: ones are a bit of a heavier push for her,

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Speaker 1: So thank Christina. Everyone genius the goat. Yes, yes, And

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Speaker 1: then I feel like I have to put this disclaimer

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Speaker 1: in here. I did write this in high school. I

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Speaker 1: slightly edited it for I submitted it for Thirteen Days

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Speaker 1: of Halloween two years ago. I was like, it's really dark,

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Speaker 1: and they're like dark is good, and then they were

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Speaker 1: like it's too dark. I'm like, yeah, what do you

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Speaker 1: think with my sweet disposition? And they're like no, Andy, no, yes,

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Speaker 1: they know you love horror right like, and you love

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Speaker 1: like all the darkness I do. I think they were

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Speaker 1: just surprised, because I think they were. I guess when

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Speaker 1: you say dark that can mean a lot of different things.

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Speaker 1: And they weren't anticipating kind of a real world tragedy.

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Speaker 1: And on Dark I'm building it up into way more

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Speaker 1: than it actually as I promised. But it was part

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Speaker 1: of a larger story that I did right. And I'm

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Speaker 1: really eager to talk about it because I think it's

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Speaker 1: really interesting. But before we do that, we don't want

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Speaker 1: to spoil it. So let's get into the fiction reading

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Speaker 1: of Deep Dream. You already know how this story ends.

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Speaker 1: There was always only one outcome. I wish you were different,

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Speaker 1: but wishing does not make it so. My name is

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Speaker 1: Tara Martkin. I'm twenty two years old. I have lived

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Speaker 1: an incredibly sheltered life. I've never had sex, I've never

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Speaker 1: broken a bone. I've never experienced trauma of any kind.

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Speaker 1: I have also been beaten. I have also broken numerous bones.

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Speaker 1: I have also been sexually assaulted. Every time I attempt

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Speaker 1: to count the number of traumatic instances in my life,

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Speaker 1: I decided it's not worth knowing. There is no cognitive

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Speaker 1: business here, no eu finistic language, no mental gymnastics, no

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Speaker 1: selective memory. Both are true. At once. You doubt the

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Speaker 1: veracity of this. I did too, when I would remember

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Speaker 1: the violence and faded yet selectively vivid detail. I would

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Speaker 1: tell myself I was remembering a dream, A brutal dream

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Speaker 1: lodged in my brain like a splinter, unsettling, disturbing, but false,

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Speaker 1: an explosion of anxious nerves and an unsettled mind. For

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Speaker 1: a time, I could ignore these dreams that felt more

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Speaker 1: like memories, but they bled into my life life. When

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Speaker 1: I slept in the room, she I had been attacked,

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Speaker 1: and it took my breath away, as though she I

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Speaker 1: was right there. When I ignored the knocking, she had

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Speaker 1: answered that resulted in years of violence for her. I

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Speaker 1: could see it, the path not traveled. Anxiety, depression. That's

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Speaker 1: what I thought, That's what everyone thought. But these memories

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Speaker 1: visions became harder and harder to ignore. I had all

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Speaker 1: the symptoms of someone who had undergone a trauma without

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Speaker 1: ever having endured one. I felt like a fake, but

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Speaker 1: the trauma was real all the same. I avoided people,

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Speaker 1: I avoided my reflection, I avoided everything. I slept all

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Speaker 1: the time. When I wasn't sleeping, I was crying tears

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Speaker 1: that had no end. Then came a new theory, repressed

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Speaker 1: memories fighting to the surface. The idea made my skin crawl.

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Speaker 1: It made me doubt my memories and question my reality.

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Speaker 1: I remembered not being attacked, and I remembered being attacked.

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Speaker 1: I remembered the dates that happened to one version of

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Speaker 1: me and didn't to the other. To me, I remembered

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Speaker 1: the knocking on the door and not answering it, falling

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Speaker 1: back into an uneasy sleep. And I remember the knocking

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Speaker 1: on the door, answering it and the attack that followed.

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Speaker 1: Both existed in my brain m Neither was repressed. Otherwise,

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Speaker 1: our lives were the same. It was only in these

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Speaker 1: key traumatic moments we diverged. She was me, I was her.

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Speaker 1: I went to therapy. It was difficult to explain, even

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Speaker 1: to myself. Some days I was sure memories of this

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Speaker 1: other me were dreams or or repressed memories. Some days

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Speaker 1: I just thought I had lost my might. Others I

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Speaker 1: thought there was another me existing alongside me in an

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Speaker 1: alternate timeline, and I was catching glimpses into her life.

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Speaker 1: I wondered if she was catching glimpses into mine. She

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Speaker 1: was angry to have suffered where I did not. She

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Speaker 1: was aware of me at all. Sometimes I blamed her.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't foolish enough to answer the knocking at the door.

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Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to suffer the consequences for a decision

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Speaker 1: I did not make. But I dismissed these thoughts, ashamed

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Speaker 1: to have thought them in the first place. As unhinged

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Speaker 1: as this might sound to you, in a weird way,

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Speaker 1: it soon became the explanation that most accurately described my experience.

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Speaker 1: I'm a logical person. I did not arrive at this

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Speaker 1: conclusion easily process of elimination. Years of it. I had

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Speaker 1: no precedent to believe it, and very little desire to.

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Speaker 1: As time passed, as the memories pounded more loudly and

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Speaker 1: incessantly for entering into my brain, I had no choice

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Speaker 1: but to believe it. Not that I would tell anyone,

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Speaker 1: I would barely admit it to myself. Do you know

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Speaker 1: what trauma does to the brain? I do. There's a

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Speaker 1: bringing in your years. Learn of colors, something stick out,

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Speaker 1: bright stripes, and the clothes you're wearing. How poorly those

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Speaker 1: clothes fit, while others blur the edges soft the memory

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Speaker 1: both overly clear and utterly glossed over, a consuming mess

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Speaker 1: of colors and sensations and feelings that don't feel like

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Speaker 1: they're yours. Time becomes meaningless, and also everything, because after

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Speaker 1: a traumatic event, everything will be defined as before and after.

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Speaker 1: These sound like contradictions because they are, but that doesn't

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Speaker 1: change the truth of them. How would I know this?

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Speaker 1: No it in my bones, in my soul if these

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Speaker 1: traumatic events never happened to me? There was no reason

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Speaker 1: for me too, perhaps a remnant of my alternate someone.

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Speaker 1: I began to resent more and more, how was this

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Speaker 1: my responsibility? In quiet moments when sleep adot to me,

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Speaker 1: questions with her eyes, how had this happened? Was the

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Speaker 1: other me all right? Did she exists in a parallel universe?

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Speaker 1: Or was she here? Had there been some mistake of

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Speaker 1: splitting time? Had she died a ghost in my life?

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Speaker 1: Had I been cursed to bear witness to her pain?

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Speaker 1: Some ability that opened a window into her world and

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Speaker 1: let me observe it? Could I help her? Because she

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Speaker 1: needed help? I began to suspect she was reaching out

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Speaker 1: to me. It started small at first, aborted Internet searches

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Speaker 1: about alternate realities, Embarrassment and curiosity warring inside me. These memories, too,

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Speaker 1: took on fuzzy edges, as though they aren't mine. But

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Speaker 1: they were right. Things I knew started feeling faint, as

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Speaker 1: though I was reciting facts from someone else's memories and

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Speaker 1: not my own. I started to feel immaterial, a spectator

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Speaker 1: in my own life. Some days I was certain, so

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Speaker 1: certain I could see something else, someone else, that my

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Speaker 1: life was fabricated. Whispers of promises of revelation haunted my

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Speaker 1: waking hours. Every now and then, my reflection in the

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Speaker 1: mirror moved just slightly off. Scars started appearing on my body.

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Speaker 1: I scratched at them. I had some. I was desperate

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Speaker 1: for them not to exist. They weren't mine, I told myself.

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Speaker 1: And yet any embarrassment around internet searches on alternate realities

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Speaker 1: paled in the face of my growing terror. Any empathy

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Speaker 1: I had for the alternate at me faded lost and

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Speaker 1: resentful anger. I was convinced she was trying to take

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Speaker 1: over my life. She had discovered the secret to alternate

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Speaker 1: realities and was coming to race me and take my place.

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Speaker 1: She's the one that answered that damn door. She's the

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Speaker 1: one that led evil into her life. She should suffer

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Speaker 1: for it, not me. I was going to slam the

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Speaker 1: door to my reality in her face. I found a ritual.

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Speaker 1: It called for a set of stairs, a candle, and

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Speaker 1: sacred offerings for each step, and the blood of something new.

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Speaker 1: For it to work, I had to ascend the stairs backwards,

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Speaker 1: and above all else not look back. Doing so not

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Speaker 1: only would cause the ritual to fail, but would leave

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Speaker 1: me unsure if I was in the correct reality. This

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Speaker 1: did not terrify me as much as it should have.

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Speaker 1: It very nearly described how I already felt. I was fortunate.

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Speaker 1: There was a set of stairs in my small apartment,

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Speaker 1: a winding set of four. I killed a rat for

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Speaker 1: the blood. Clumsily, messily, unbearably, terrifyingly numb, the tears streamed

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Speaker 1: out my face. At one time I would not have

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Speaker 1: believed myself capable of this. There wasn't much blood. I

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Speaker 1: hoped it was enough. I waited till midnight to start.

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Speaker 1: My hands shook as I let the first candle, I

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Speaker 1: refuse you. I slammed the door shut and lock it.

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Speaker 1: I whispered into the flickering dark. I set down my

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Speaker 1: first offering, a family picture from my ninth birthday party,

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Speaker 1: worn at the edges. I used it as a bookmark,

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Speaker 1: and it was almost never without it. I poured a

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Speaker 1: few drops of blood on the image. Very careful not

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Speaker 1: to look over my shoulder, I took a step back

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Speaker 1: onto the second stair. I placed the second candle down

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Speaker 1: and lit it. The hiss of the match loud in

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Speaker 1: the dark. I refuse you. I slammed the door and

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Speaker 1: lock it here. I placed the small stuff to being

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Speaker 1: my father had given to me, the words someone loves

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Speaker 1: You stitched along it. Blood dripped on the fabric. Staring

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Speaker 1: at Crimson, the candles flickered. The hair on the back

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Speaker 1: of my next stood up ter. I jumped violently at

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Speaker 1: the whispering in my ear, almost dropping the items in

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Speaker 1: my arm, almost turning around terrified I'd see my doppelganger

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Speaker 1: staring at me with her cold, devouring eyes, so full

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Speaker 1: of pain. She'd do anything not to feel it, including

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Speaker 1: killing me and taking my place. But I didn't turn.

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Speaker 1: Unbearably tense, I breathed heavily into the silence, waiting for

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Speaker 1: a hand to fall on my shoulder, to be shoved

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Speaker 1: down the stairs. Moments passed and nothing happened. My body

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Speaker 1: trembled as I fumbled with the next step behind me,

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Speaker 1: almost tottering over. It took several tries for me to

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Speaker 1: light the candle, fingers shaking wildly. Once lit, I gulped out,

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Speaker 1: I refuse you. I slammed the door and lock it. Here.

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Speaker 1: I placed a necklace my friend had made from me,

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Speaker 1: goofy and ugly but precious to me. Blood splashed all

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Speaker 1: over it, and I jerked back, afraid of using it

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Speaker 1: all Before the ritual was finished, I hesitated, listening for

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Speaker 1: stepping back onto the final stair, the air heavy around me. Carefully,

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Speaker 1: I placed the last candle lit. It stared into the flame.

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Speaker 1: I refuge. I slammed the door and lock it would

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Speaker 1: tremble in hands. I sat down, my last offering a

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Speaker 1: paper rose. My mom had given me white and pink

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Speaker 1: tissue paper. She surprised me with it. She sat down

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Speaker 1: and made it for me, surprised me with it. A

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Speaker 1: tear dripped onto the paper, alongside the blood. I was crying.

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Speaker 1: I straightened my body, painfully, tense, undeserving terry. I heard

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Speaker 1: in the dark, I'm gonna tear you apart. You already did,

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Speaker 1: I thought, and then wasn't sure why I thought it.

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Speaker 1: Now I had to wait, stand still, not look back,

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Speaker 1: and wait until the candles went out. Whispers slithered in

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Speaker 1: my ear, warm breath against my neck, and my name,

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Speaker 1: over and over, Tara, Terence, Darry, Dary, Terry, Terry. I

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Speaker 1: stood vigil. I prayed. I didn't believe in God, any god,

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Speaker 1: but I prayed, please, please, Please. Sometimes I whispered it

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Speaker 1: aloud in the invocation. I didn't do anything wrong. I

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Speaker 1: don't deserve to be her. I don't deserve to live

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Speaker 1: in her world. I was never her. As the night

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Speaker 1: went on, I started swaying on my feet, but I stood,

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Speaker 1: determined to reclaim my reality, even as the whispers assailed me.

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Speaker 1: Curled around me in demanding on her, limping, pleading, pleading

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Speaker 1: with me to let her in, pleading with me to

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Speaker 1: let her in. I refused. The first candle went out,

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Speaker 1: the second, the third, in justice exhaustion almost had me

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Speaker 1: collapsing or turning around, ruining the ritual. The fourth candle

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Speaker 1: flickered out, leaving me in darkness. I waited, waiting to

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Speaker 1: feel an easy in my soul that I so desperately

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Speaker 1: longed for, to feel some semblance of closure, of something,

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Speaker 1: anything other than the screaming nothingness that refused to be ignored.

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Speaker 1: My world shattered and nothing changed I turned around to

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Speaker 1: screen building inside me, and there she was. I did

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Speaker 1: screams in In the end, there was no alternate reality.

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Speaker 1: I was the one that didn't exist, she summoned to me.

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Speaker 1: She was the one to research alternate reality, growing more

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Speaker 1: and more desperate, lighting candles and spilling blood and chanting,

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Speaker 1: so desperate for relief from the pain, desperate enough to

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Speaker 1: abandon ship on her reality and try her luck in another.

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Speaker 1: I exist now because she willed me into existence. I'm

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Speaker 1: molded from her pain, borne from her horror and desperation.

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Speaker 1: But I'm just a fragment. My memories are false. Your

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Speaker 1: make belief, which is for how things should be. How

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Speaker 1: much violence has been allowed in the belief of ships.

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Speaker 1: Entire empires have been built on shoots. There are no

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Speaker 1: alternate realities, only this one. There's only this reality, and

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Speaker 1: in this one there's unfathomable violence and pain and grief

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Speaker 1: and death. We live in a world where so many

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Speaker 1: of us are hurt and ignored, an accepted fact, just

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Speaker 1: how it is another statistic the victim's fault. The evil

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Speaker 1: people are capable of the monstrous acts we have the

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Speaker 1: capacity to commit, going punished that are allowed perpetuated the

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Speaker 1: cycle continues. That's the scariest part of the story. You me,

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Speaker 1: all of us, We are the monster. At the end

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Speaker 1: of the book, we hear what keeps ourselves up at night.

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Speaker 1: The most terrifying thing in this world is us, and

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Speaker 1: that brings us to the end of this fiction reading.

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed it. It's always so weird to

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Speaker 1: say when it's something that's like a little upsetting. I

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Speaker 1: did name it Deep Dream because, like I said, I

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Speaker 1: love those like technology names, And this is a thing

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Speaker 1: Google does where you can feed it images so it

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Speaker 1: can learn what things look like the Google AI and

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Speaker 1: then it makes the most trippy like three D paintings

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Speaker 1: you've ever seen. But I gave this story this name

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Speaker 1: because I in high school had gone through all this trauma,

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Speaker 1: was going through all this trauma, and it sort of

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Speaker 1: ended kind of abruptly, and I was able to convince

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Speaker 1: myself that the whole thing had been a dream, that

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Speaker 1: the whole thing this was a different version of me

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Speaker 1: that had gone through this. It was a dream version

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Speaker 1: of me, and it was really upsetting. But it wasn't real.

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Speaker 1: It hadn't actually happened. That wasn't me to the point

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Speaker 1: that like, I had a breaking moment um several years

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Speaker 1: later when I was in college and my mom bought

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Speaker 1: it up and I like stopped in my in my

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Speaker 1: tracks and thought, wait, that was that happened? Because I

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Speaker 1: had just so effectively made it into this kind of

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Speaker 1: like dream sequence that I never gave too much thought

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Speaker 1: because it was scary. I didn't want to think about it.

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Speaker 1: But it's like I would have these images and they

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Speaker 1: were so strong and so powerful, and these memories, and

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Speaker 1: I could just kept thinking, this is a dream, it's

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Speaker 1: not a real memory. And I got I would get

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Speaker 1: really angry at this other version of myself, and I

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Speaker 1: would blame her for opening the door essentially and letting

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Speaker 1: this in and letting it happen. And I'm saying letting

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Speaker 1: you know, and these very guilt driven words that I felt.

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Speaker 1: And it was a way from me to separate myself

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Speaker 1: from myself other me who I blamed for letting that happen,

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Speaker 1: and and I was angry at her because I didn't

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Speaker 1: want to have to deal with it like that. I

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Speaker 1: didn't do this. This is why am I feeling all

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Speaker 1: of your sad emotions in vain? When I didn't do

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Speaker 1: what you did, but I had. But I I actually

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Speaker 1: wrote out a whole like book level version of this

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Speaker 1: story and I'd still have it. And it's interesting to

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Speaker 1: read because to me now it's so clear that I

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Speaker 1: was dealing with trauma and I was compartmentalizing things, and

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Speaker 1: I was like trying to essentially create a separate reality

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Speaker 1: so that I could function. So you were disassociating, yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: but it was it. It did come unraveled because they

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Speaker 1: kept like knocking at the back of my psyche um

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Speaker 1: and it wouldn't let me go. And I mean, eventually,

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Speaker 1: when I got into college, I was able to really

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Speaker 1: put it away and forget about it. But as listeners

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Speaker 1: know this podcast, as you know, Samantha eventually just wore

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Speaker 1: me down and I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't

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Speaker 1: pretend or keep up that at charade anymore. But I

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Speaker 1: did do it for years, years and years and years,

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Speaker 1: and just reading back on it now, it's so fascinating

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Speaker 1: because I'm so clearly like trying to deal with this

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Speaker 1: thing and this traumatic all these traumatic experiences, and there's

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Speaker 1: so many unhealthy things in there that I'm like, wow, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you were you were really struggling, and I'm still struggling

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Speaker 1: with some of that stuff. But it's just it's interesting

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Speaker 1: to read. Thinking, like I really did believe at one

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Speaker 1: point I convinced myself that this had not happened to me,

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Speaker 1: and it was different. It's a dream, dream version, but

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Speaker 1: I still struggling to deal with it, and I was

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Speaker 1: writing it out and I like created a whole alternate

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Speaker 1: timeline for her and I called her Terra. She's had

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Speaker 1: a different name than me. But yeah, so that's what

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Speaker 1: we just did is sort of a piece of all

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Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, happy holidays. I do, I do really

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Speaker 1: think like it's it's interesting and heavy. This is heavy

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Speaker 1: handed at the end. Um, I did preserve a lot

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Speaker 1: of it as I wrote it. So if you're like, wow,

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Speaker 1: this is really over the top, yes it is, Yes

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Speaker 1: it is. It was a teenage Annie. It was really

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Speaker 1: leaning into the youngst. But I think that's something that

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Speaker 1: we have talked about, um, through our our look at

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Speaker 1: trauma and coping and writing is one of my biggest

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Speaker 1: coping mechanisms, and clearly I was doing it even yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean most of my life, but during that time

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Speaker 1: I was as well, Yeah, I think it's my It

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Speaker 1: makes it easier. Like I said before, I think that's

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons I connect so hard to like

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Speaker 1: fictional things, and I'll cry at fictional things more easily

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Speaker 1: cry at nonfictional things, because there's that distance, there's that space,

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Speaker 1: and I don't feel like I have to put up

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Speaker 1: so many protections with a fictional thing. Even though this

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Speaker 1: wasn't fictional, I convinced myself that it was right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I hope that you enjoyed. We really do like

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Speaker 1: doing these. Um so we're probably gonna do about once

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Speaker 1: a month and again. If you have any suggestions or

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Speaker 1: thoughts or like other things we could do in this format,

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Speaker 1: we would love to hear them. You can email us

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Speaker 1: at stuff Medium, mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com.

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Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at moms toff podcast,

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Speaker 1: or on Instagram and stuff One Never Told You. Thanks,

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Speaker 1: It's always too our super producer, Christina bug Oat, Yes,

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Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening Stuff One Never Told You.

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Speaker 1: Protection of I Heart Radio from more podcast on my

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M