Part 3:
My apartment is quiet. My phone does not control me. My money stays where I choose to put it.
Sometimes I still drive past my parents’ house. It looks the same from the outside. In winter, there will be candles in the windows and a perfect table inside.
I will not be there.
Not because I was thrown out.
Not because I am punishing them.
But because I finally understand the difference between being loved and being used as infrastructure.
They called it carrying me.
I called it keeping the lights on.
Now their lights are their responsibility.
Mine are still on.
They always were.
I was just too busy powering everyone else’s life to notice my own.
