For five years I had been asleep inside my own life, moving through it in the anxious half-dream of a woman trying to earn the love of people who had priced her love and found only her money worth keeping.

And somewhere between the lobby and the penthouse, I had woken up.

By the time the sun began painting the curtains gold, I was no longer the woman they had left standing by the door.

I was the woman who had finally, fully, opened her eyes.

I want to be precise about what I did and did not feel that night, because the difference is the whole meaning of it.

I was not acting out of rage.