It is a trap dressed as an option.

My grandmother knew this in her bones, and when she left me that inheritance, she was not leaving me spending money.

She was leaving me the one thing that transforms leaving from an impossible fantasy into an actual, executable decision: the means to survive on the other side of the door.

That is what she meant by permission to save yourself. Not permission from anyone else — the money was permission from reality itself, the material fact that made freedom physically possible.

A person can only walk out a door they can survive walking through.