That’s not a thing you can use up.

Deciding whether you matter is my job, and the answer is yes, and it was yes before you were born, and it will be yes when you’re forty. I don’t know if it fully lands yet.

But I watch him, and I think it is landing, one repetition at a time, the same slow way the other lesson landed — just aimed, this time, in the direction that heals instead of the one that harms.

Chapter 10 — Three Lies