This is the distinction between revenge and boundaries, and it is one that people who have spent their lives being exploited find very hard to see, because they have been trained to experience any self-protection as an attack.

For thirty-four years, I had been taught that taking care of myself, at any cost to the people exploiting me, was selfishness, was cruelty, was revenge.

And what I finally understood, pressing Cancel on that recurring transfer in a rented room, was that this was a lie, and that stopping the flow of my own resources to people who despised me was not an act against them at all.

It was simply the end of an act against myself.