“So if all your needs were met,” he asked, with an edge, “how can you possibly claim you were financially controlled?”

“Because,” I said, and I said it to the judge and not to him, “receiving access to things is not the same as having control over whether you are permitted to keep them.

A prisoner in a comfortable cell is still a prisoner.

The comfort was never the question.

The lock was.”

I watched that land on the judge, and on the courtroom, and I understood something about why it landed, which is that it named a confusion the world actively encourages us to make.