There was the first family gathering I attended without rehearsing an exit in advance.

There was the first time my phone lit up with a message from Derek’s sister and my stomach did not drop before I read it.

There was the Sunday I realized, folding laundry, that I had not calculated anyone’s debt to me in weeks, because there was no longer a ledger to keep.

You do not notice the weight of a ledger until you set it down.

I had been doing the arithmetic of who owed me what for so long that the sudden quiet of a mind with no sums to run felt, at first, almost like something missing, before it resolved into what it actually was, which was rest.