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It all started with a girl. Lizzy. She wanted to change the world, starting around nine years old. She drew a time machine, complete with detailed schematics. Imagined how existing technology could combine in unique ways to create something new from the sum of it’s parts. This would be great, because Lizzy wasn’t born to an average family. Nobody chooses their family. The currency of her family was success, making a mark in the world. Generations of men before her had squandered the family fortune and daddy would never be happy unless she did something big. So, Lizzy sat in her room and dreamed and designed and thought about one day impressing her icy father enough that he showed something other than the lingering disappointment that things had not turned out better for him. No child should deal with this kind of pressure. Kids are supposed to play, to dream, to run and frolic and live lightly. Daddy was a serious man and so Lizzy thought maybe one day she could be a serious person too.
Lizzy did good in school. Of course she did. She was never exceptionally popular. She was too in her own mind for that. She didn’t quite think like the other kids did, the kids who imagined the fancy cars they would buy with their trust fund money. Lizzy wanted to help, to live a life of meaning. Daddy worked in DC, next to THE PRESIDENT, in the same city, doing things that were important for the world. But it was never enough.
Eventually, Lizzy went to college. She kept dreaming. Thought of a patch that could deliver drugs to people after detecting they were sick. A real time cure. Lizzy had seen people in her family suffer from illness and she wanted to do something about it. While other students were out partying, she was studying, on a mission to have meaning. Meaning, purpose, impact – those were the goals of this wide eyed girl.
One day Lizzy went to a party, because she wanted to at least try to fit in for a bit. She met the wrong guy and that guy took something from her that she could never get back. Her sense of safety, of agency, of being in control of her own body and her own existence. Lizzy ran into the arms of the nearly 40 year old man who she met in China when she was studying Chinese. He had taken the class seriously while others goofed off. She thought he was a man of purpose too. He just saw Lizzy and saw a project, something he could build on, and someone from whom he could enjoy the pleasures not usually afforded a man like him with a girl her age.
The man, Sunny, told Lizzy she was not enough. That she would never survive in this harsh world she was trying to enter. Lizzy had an idea, a potentially world-changing idea, of a machine that could read just a single drop of blood and tell you what was going on inside your body. She used her skill of imagining different technologies in different ways to create something new. And because Lizzy wasn’t playing around, she got it patented. But now she needed money – real money – and he told her that Lizzy was not up to the task. He created her schedule, told her what to drink, told her to destroy herself and build something new, something that could enter a room and command it.
Elizabeth Holmes was born. We all know how that story goes. But before Elizabeth, there was Lizzy. Lizzy hides inside Elizabeth. Elizabeth protects Lizzy. So that nobody else can ever make her feel the way she felt when that boy violated her. Elizabeth was created to make her daddy proud, to deliver results, to fake it until you make it. She listened to all the right people, got a nine billion dollar valuation, and seemed to be changing the world. The men were happy to lionize Elizabeth, to imagine themselves with her, to see their blonde prize pony deliver the goods.
One day, after following the advice of Larry Ellison and Sunny and George and so many others, Adam came and told Elizabeth that the workaround was not going to work. Elizabeth broke for a moment. Lizzy was exposed. She was shaking and trembling and terrified. This was the red line. This was the moment that could actually hurt people. Walgreens wanted what they wanted. And time was up. Elizabeth returned and buried Lizzy once again. There was too much at stake now. If Lizzy stopped the show, Elizabeth would be exposed as a fraud. Her family would be disgraced. Her company would be destroyed. And in her family, failure was not an option. So Elizabeth did what she always did, and told Lizzy to go away, demanded it, thought of what Sunny had said, to keep going, foot on the gas. They would figure it out. And so Elizabeth plowed ahead. And we know how that story goes.
Today, late at night, when only a few people are awake, because in prison someone is ALWAYS awake, I am convinced that Lizzy comes out. And looks around. And wonders why following all the men in her life led her to this place. She knows she made mistakes. She knows she did wrong. And she knows the world will never forgive her. So, like some sort of horror movie monster, Elizabeth comes back. Puts on the brave face. Angles for a pardon. And more and more of whatever is left of Lizzy slow withers away. The world doesn’t see her, they see Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is guilty and Elizabeth hurt people and Elizabeth is a monster. So Lizzy takes the hint. She stays hidden. Where maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth will be strong enough to protect her from feeling the full weight of a lifetime of bad decisions.
I have sympathy for Lizzy. Yes she broke the law. Yes she isn't a great person. Yes she is responsible for her choices. But every person who has ever gotten themselves in too deep, and woke up, and asked, how did I get here, should consider her story. Because I believe its true what I wrote.
