And then, in one moment, from two thousand miles away, the person who had always owned it simply stopped authorizing it — and they learned, in front of a manager and two security guards, the thing they had spent years refusing to know: that they had possessed none of it.

They had only ever been permitted to use it.

And permission, unlike ownership, can be withdrawn.

Chapter 13 — What I Built

I want to step back from the collapse, because the collapse is the satisfying part, and the satisfying part is never the important part.

The important part is what came before — the years in which I let it happen.

Because I did let it happen, in a sense, and I have made my peace with understanding how.