I stared at the two keys for a long time.
I didn’t take either of them.
Maybe I was still hoping a third choice was hiding somewhere. A choice where I lose nothing. A choice where I don’t get it wrong.
But Wonderland has its own way with people who refuse to choose.
I don’t know how I got there. I only know I found myself somewhere else and finally standing in front of the person I had been afraid to meet.
The bigger me.
I expected her to be proud. Loud. Cruel. I thought she would list everything I still lacked and tell me I was not enough to become her.
She wasn’t any of that.
She was quiet. Patient. Almost ordinary.
I was small in her hand, but for the first time I did not feel humiliated next to her. As if I had misunderstood this for years.
Maybe what I called arrogance was never about seeing myself as too big.
Maybe it was the opposite.
I was so afraid of being small that I built someone larger in my mind. Someone who was always sure. Always seen. Always proving something.
Now that I was finally facing her, she wasn’t proving anything.
She was only looking at me.
And a worse thought arrived:
Maybe the bigger me was never my jailer.
Maybe I made her to protect the smaller one.
For the first time, I didn’t want to become larger.
I only wanted to understand why being small had scared me for so long.