When it finally went quiet, I discovered how much of me it had been using.

There was so much more of me than I had known, and all of it came back, and I did not spend a single ounce of the returned self on hating anyone.

That, in the end, was the freedom.

Not that they lost.

That I no longer had to think about whether they won.

Months later I stood on a hotel balcony over Lake Como, on the far side of a huge international contract, watching my parents take pictures on the lawn below in the mild European light.