In this version of the story, the woman cannot emerge from childhood. She lives in a fantasy world where she is loved and cared for, a world whose boundaries hold off her actual life of words as weapons and arguing and judgement. The trauma in her background keeps her pinned to her past, like a dragonfly's wings stuck to styrofoam. 

She is drowning in her illusions, and she knows they are killing her, day after day after day. She is empty; she has given everything she has to work, and there is no more. She has no idea how to be a whole human being; she has never had to learn. She imagines that if she can escape people, she can save herself, find a way to be whole, in herself. 

What would it be like to be truly alone with herself, unplugged and isolated?

She practices at first, going away for weekends, staying at Airbnb rentals, cabins in "the country," in the trees. She leaves behind infinite layers of "civilized" life in the city, all the interlocking pieces that keep her clamped to social structures, that create the infrastructure of a life. 

She finds little moments of what feel like connection to a little girl, someone she knew for a little while. Someone she believes she needs to know again.

She slowly writes herself out of everyone's life, out of their worlds. She withdraws and no one follows. She resigns her position at the college, sells her house, arranges her finances to live without debt for two years, and moves to a tiny cottage on a little mountain. No internet access, no human relationships, no outside expectations, no talking, no arguing. Her time is hers, for two years.

She begins a journey back to herself.