The Receipt in the Gray Jacket
The numbers were correct.
It was the right decision.
It cost me my career and both of us understood at the time that it would, and we called it a sacrifice and we were both, in that moment, proud of me for making it.
Nobody tells you that a sacrifice has a shelf life.
That there is a window, maybe eighteen months, in which the other person still remembers that you did something — and that after the window closes, the thing you gave up becomes the baseline.
It stops being Jessi left her job for us and becomes Jessi doesn’t work.