August 14, 2021:
She gave me Slan and Against the Fall of Night — sci fi novels about isolation, uniqueness, misunderstanding.
She was projecting. She was isolated, unique, misunderstood. Ignoring the evidence in front of her face she extrapolated from her personal experience that my arc would be the same.
Which, almost inevitably, evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy. She created the isolation I later lived, by sending me across town inappropriately to a school I hated, and by providing inappropriate fictional role models of how she expected me to be.