It is the reason all of the above exists.

I read item nine three times.

And here is what I want to record, because it is the closest thing to a moral that this account has.

Everything in me wanted to argue with it.

Not with the substance — with the framing.

There was a whole speech available about how I was not that man anymore, about therapy, about the four years, about how she had not seen me in seven years and did not know who she was talking to.

All of it would have been true and every word of it would have been a defense, and the last time I had been offered evidence about my own life and had responded with a defense, I had lost six years.