As I stepped out into the crisp Atlanta morning, a sense of liberation mingled with the chill in the air. The sky was a pale, promising blue, and the streets were enveloped in a quiet that felt monumental. My bags sat heavily in the trunk of my car, and with them, the weight of years spent in a space that no longer felt like home.
Driving away from the house, I felt a twinge of something bittersweet—an unnameable mix of anger, relief, and the kind of sadness that only comes from being a stranger to your own family. They had mistaken my quiet compliance for weakness, my financial support for obligation. But there’s a powerful clarity that comes when the illusion of belonging shatters: you see things for what they truly are.
My mind wandered back to the long nights spent hunched over my laptop, analyzing data, forecasting trends, closing deals. I’d built a life around numbers, finding solace in their predictability, their stubborn refusal to lie. Numbers had become my allies, my way of asserting control in an unpredictable world. It was ironic how they never saw it coming; the math was simple—the person who pays holds the power.
