And the moment I stopped carrying it, it went where it had always belonged, back onto the people who had generated it, and it turned out to be far heavier than any of them had guessed while I was the one holding it.

I am writing this from my office, high above the city, with the markets quiet and Zachary’s plane due in tonight for our anniversary.

I am surrounded, now, by people who respect my mind and guard my heart, which is the only wealth I have ever found that does not lose its value.

And I have learned the one thing I most needed to learn, the hard and only way it can be learned.

Your true worth is never given back to you in the funhouse mirrors of a family that needed you small.