One had removed a tumor from my brain.

The other had cut a toxic, parasitic life cleanly away from the rest of me, and closed the wound, and left me whole.

I stood, and pulled my coat against the breeze, and walked back down the path toward my car — not broken, not alone, but with a great and quiet space opened up inside my life where all the lies had been, exactly the size and shape of the one person I had abandoned for fifteen years to keep everyone else comfortable.

Myself.

I was going, at last, to go and find her.