What an impactful text, dear @agmoore. I'm not so impressed by the gaze of others, but rather by the internal strangeness that persists in you despite the need for a forced transformation of your identity, which is anchored in childhood. In the reading, one feels the permanent tension between the appearance imposed by the outside world and the internal core of an authentic and free self. The narrative tone of your text captures that gap: you lie to hide "the strangeness," to fit into a world that does not accept the freedom you had before, the invisibility in the countryside, the absolute privacy. It is a synthetic but impressively profound text where the protagonist, you, seems to remain suspended between two needs: recognizing the loss while managing to preserve a secret refuge. Your nights on the fire escape, near your corner, are a perfect symbol of your internal resistance, of your strength. I saw that staircase very clearly thanks to your narrative ability. It is beautiful, the staircase and the whole story.