“You Need To Move Out,” My Mother Declared Right When I Was Still Biting Into My Christmas Turkey. I Answered With Only One Sentence: “Really?” Perhaps My Mother Had Forgotten That I Was The One Who Paid The Rent And All The Bills.

The Next Morning, I Quietly Packed My Things And Left The House Without Saying Another Word.

My name is Maya Chen, and I’m a derivatives trader at a mid-sized financial firm in downtown Atlanta. I’m thirty-two years old, I make $240,000 a year plus bonuses, and for the past five years, my family has believed I work as an administrative assistant who “does something with computers.”

I never corrected them. It felt easier that way.

The thing about immigrant families—or at least mine, Chinese by way of Taiwan, relocated to Georgia when I was twelve—is that there’s a particular kind of invisibility that comes with being the quiet daughter. The one who doesn’t cause problems. The one who sends money home without complaint. The one whose success is useful but never quite celebrated because it doesn’t fit the narrative they want to tell.

My younger sister Lily is a dental hygienist married to Brad, who calls himself an “entrepreneur” but mostly day-trades cryptocurrency from our living room couch while wearing sweatpants that cost more than my first car. My mother, Bernice, emigrated twenty years ago with dreams of American prosperity and ended up working in a nail salon until her arthritis forced early retirement. My father died six years ago—heart attack, sudden, the kind that leaves questions instead of closure—and left behind medical debt that took me three years to quietly pay off without anyone knowing.

We’d been living together in a rented three-bedroom house in Buckhead for five years. When I first suggested we pool resources after Dad died—Mom couldn’t afford her apartment alone, I was tired of my sterile studio in Midtown, Lily and Brad were perpetually “between opportunities”—it seemed like a practical solution. Extended family under one roof. Very traditional. Very sensible.

What I didn’t anticipate was becoming the family ATM.

The lease was in my name because I was the only one with verifiable income and a credit score above 720. The utilities were in my name because I set them up. The internet, the insurance, the streaming services, the grocery delivery subscriptions—all in my name, all paid from my account, all treated like they materialized through divine providence rather than direct deposit every two weeks.

I wired $3,200 every month to Mr. Henderson, our landlord, a retired Delta pilot who spent half the year in Florida and couldn’t care less who actually lived in his property as long as the rent arrived on time. I covered the sky-high winter heating bills because my mother refused to let the thermostat drop below 75°F, insisting that anything lower would “make her joints hurt” and completely ignoring the $400 monthly gas bills from November through March.

I paid for the gigabit fiber internet Brad “needed” for his day trading and livestreaming ventures—ventures that had yet to produce a single dollar of profit but required, apparently, the absolute fastest connection money could buy. I covered the family health insurance plan, $1,800 monthly, that my mother bragged about at her church every Sunday, telling the other elderly Chinese ladies how her daughter “took care of everything” while conveniently omitting that “everything” meant I was single-handedly funding a household of four adults on my salary alone.

On paper, to anyone who asked, Bernice Chen was “the homeowner,” the matriarch, the one who made decisions about the house. In reality, I was just a very tired bank with a family debit card that never stopped swiping.

They had no idea what I actually did for work. When people asked—relatives, church friends, Mom’s mahjong group—I’d learned to say something vague about “financial services” or “data analysis” and let them fill in the blanks with whatever made sense to them. Usually, they settled on “secretary” or “office worker,” something safe and unimpressive, something that explained why I wore business clothes and left early but didn’t suggest I might be more successful than comfortable.

My mother liked it that way. She could brag about Lily’s “medical career” (cleaning teeth twice a week at a pediatric dentist’s office) and Brad’s “investment expertise” (losing money on meme stocks) without having to explain that her older daughter, the quiet one, the unmarried one, made more than all of them combined.

I never bothered correcting the narrative. What was the point? They were happy in their version of reality, and I was too exhausted from twelve-hour trading days to fight about perception versus truth.

But this year, something shifted.

Brad and Lily had been dropping hints for months about “needing more space.” About how “cramped” their bedroom was, how they wanted to start a family but needed a bigger room, how it “wasn’t fair” that I had the master bedroom just because I “worked from home sometimes.”

I did work from home sometimes—monitoring Asian markets meant 2 a.m. calls with Hong Kong and Tokyo, meant having a setup that could handle multiple screens and secure connections, meant needing a space where I could concentrate without Brad’s gaming streams bleeding through the walls.

But they saw it differently. They saw square footage. They saw an injustice that the single daughter had more space than the married couple.

The comments started small. “Must be nice to have all that closet space.” “Seems like a waste for just one person.” “When Brad and I have kids, we’ll definitely need a bigger room.”

I ignored them. I was good at ignoring things.

Until Christmas Day.

I’d worked until noon on Christmas Eve—markets close early, but there’s always cleanup, always positions to reconcile, always that one client who needs reassurance before the holiday. I’d come home exhausted, grabbed three hours of sleep, and woken up at 4 a.m. to start cooking.

Traditional American Christmas dinner was my mother’s requirement—turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, the works—despite the fact that none of us had grown up eating this food. It was performance. Assimilation theater. A way to prove we belonged in this neighborhood, in this country, in this version of success.

I’d spent $400 at Whole Foods. Brined the turkey overnight. Made cranberry sauce from scratch because my mother insisted the canned stuff “tasted cheap.” Set the table with the fancy plates we only used twice a year. Put on Christmas music. Lit candles.

By the time everyone gathered around the table at 6 p.m., I’d been on my feet for six hours and hadn’t eaten anything except coffee and a protein bar.

We said grace. My mother thanked God for our blessings, for our health, for bringing us together. I noticed she didn’t mention the person who’d paid for the meal, but whatever. I was used to it.

I carved the turkey. Served everyone else first. Finally sat down with my own plate, piled high with food I was too tired to taste, and took my first bite of dry turkey breast that I’d somehow overcooked despite the meat thermometer.

That’s when my mother set down her fork, looked directly at me, and said, “Maya, we need to talk about your living situation.”

I stopped chewing. “My living situation?”

“You need to move out,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact, like she was telling me to pick up milk at the store. “Lily and Brad need your room. They want to start a family, and they can’t do that in that tiny space. It’s not fair to them.”

The table went quiet. Lily looked down at her plate, suddenly fascinated by her mashed potatoes. Brad leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, trying to look casual, but I could see the satisfaction in his eyes.

My mother continued, warming to her subject. “You’re single, you work all the time, you barely use that room anyway. You can find a nice little apartment, something closer to your office. It makes sense. Lily and Brad are family—they need stability.”

I set down my fork very carefully. “I’m not family?”

“Of course you are, don’t be dramatic. But you don’t need as much space. And besides, you can afford your own place. Lily and Brad are saving for their future.”

The irony was so thick I could have carved it like the turkey. Brad and Lily were “saving for their future” by living rent-free in a house I paid for, eating food I bought, using utilities I covered, while I apparently didn’t need space or stability or consideration because I had a job.

“Really?” I said. Just that one word. Flat. Neutral. Giving nothing away.

My mother smiled, mistaking my quietness for compliance. “I knew you’d understand. You’ve always been so reasonable. We’ll give you until the end of January to find something. That’s plenty of time, right?”

Brad laughed—actually laughed. “Plenty of time. It’s not like the market is crazy right now or anything.”

Lily finally looked up, her voice small. “Thanks, Maya. This means a lot to us.”

I picked up my fork and took another bite of turkey. Chewed slowly. Swallowed. Then I stood up, carried my plate to the kitchen, scraped the food into the trash, and walked upstairs to my room.

Through the floor, I could hear them starting to talk again, voices excited, already planning. Brad’s voice: “We can turn that whole closet into storage for the baby stuff.” My mother: “Finally, some grandchildren. I can tell everyone at church.”

Lily, softer: “Do you think she’s upset?”

My mother: “She’ll calm down. She always does. By tomorrow she’ll pay the rent like always and everything will be fine. You know how she is—she never makes a fuss.”

They were right about one thing: I never made a fuss.

I just made decisions.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat at my desk with my laptop, the glow of the screen reflecting off the darkened window, and I opened a different kind of spreadsheet. Not the trading algorithms and market analyses that paid my salary, but something simpler and more devastating: a household budget.

Column one: Monthly expenses for the house. Rent, utilities, internet, insurance, groceries, household supplies. $5,800 average.

Column two: Contributions from other household members. $0.

Column three: My personal expenses if I lived alone. $2,200 for a one-bedroom apartment in a decent area, maybe $300 utilities, $150 internet. $2,650 total.

I’d been paying $3,150 more per month—$37,800 per year—to live with people who’d just asked me to leave so they could have my room.

The math was clarifying.

I opened a new browser tab and searched for apartments. Found one immediately—a one-bedroom in a new building in Midtown, walking distance to my office, in-unit washer and dryer, gym, concierge. Available January 1st. I filled out the application at 2 a.m. and had an approval email by 8 a.m. Moved my $2,200 deposit with the click of a button.

Then I opened another spreadsheet—my “action items” list—and started checking boxes.

Through the wall, I could hear Brad snoring. Downstairs, my mother was watching her Chinese soap operas, the dramatic music floating up through the vents she insisted I keep running at full blast.

They had no idea that somewhere between my keyboard and my morning coffee, “moving out” was about to mean a lot more than just an empty bedroom.

The next morning—December 26th, the day after Christmas—I woke up at 6 a.m. I showered, dressed in jeans and a sweater, and systematically packed everything I owned.

Five years of accumulation fit into surprisingly few boxes. Clothes, books, my trading setup, personal documents, the few pieces of furniture I’d actually bought versus the hand-me-downs that came with the house. I worked quietly, methodically, the way I approached everything in my life.

By 10 a.m., my room was empty except for the furniture that had been there when I moved in. I’d arranged for movers to pick up my things that afternoon and deliver them to my new apartment.

The house was quiet. Everyone else was still asleep, sleeping off the Christmas dinner I’d cooked, in the warm house I’d heated, under the roof I’d paid for.

I didn’t leave a note on the fridge. I didn’t write a letter explaining my reasoning. I didn’t send a text or make a phone call or stage a dramatic confrontation.

I simply picked up my laptop bag, took one last look at the Christmas tree I’d bought and decorated, at the lights blinking in the window like everything was normal, and walked out the front door.

From the outside, it looked like just another quiet morning in our Buckhead neighborhood. Dog walkers passing by. Neighbors retrieving newspapers. The morning sun making frost sparkle on parked cars.

Inside that rented house, I’d just quietly flipped the only switch I knew how to use: money.

I drove to my office—empty on the day after Christmas, security letting me in with a curious look but no questions. I sat at my desk overlooking the Atlanta skyline and made a series of phone calls.

First: Mr. Henderson, our landlord. “Hi, this is Maya Chen. I’m calling to let you know I’ll be terminating the lease effective January 31st. I’ll send formal notice today. Yes, I understand about the sixty-day requirement—I’m willing to forfeit one month as the penalty for early termination. Yes, I’m sure.”

Second: Georgia Power, Atlanta Gas Light, AT&T Fiber, every utility company I’d been paying for five years. “I need to disconnect service at [address] effective January 15th. Yes, I’m the account holder. Yes, I’m sure.”

Third: The insurance broker. “I need to cancel the family health insurance policy. Just keep my individual coverage. Effective January 1st.”

Fourth: Every streaming service, every subscription, every automated payment I’d set up over the years. Cancel, cancel, cancel. Click, click, click.

Fifth, and most importantly: My bank. “I need to change the email and phone number associated with my account. I also need to set up fraud alerts. Yes, I’m concerned about unauthorized access. No, I don’t want to authorize any additional users.”

The whole process took ninety minutes.

By noon, I’d effectively dismantled the entire infrastructure of my family’s comfortable life. Not out of spite—I wasn’t angry, really, just done—but out of simple logic. They’d asked me to move out. So I was moving out. Completely.

They’d thought “moving out” meant I’d take my clothes and leave everything else running. They’d thought the house would stay warm, the internet would stay fast, the insurance would stay active, the rent would somehow still get paid.

They’d thought I was just an ATM that occasionally needed a bedroom.

They were about to learn that ATMs don’t work when you cut the power.

I spent the rest of the day setting up my new apartment. The movers delivered my things at 3 p.m. By evening, I had my trading setup configured, my clothes unpacked, my kitchen stocked with food I’d chosen for myself. I ordered Thai food from the restaurant downstairs, sat on my new couch overlooking the city, and felt something unfamiliar: peace.

My phone had been buzzing all day. I’d turned off notifications but could see the call count climbing. By 10 p.m.: 23 missed calls from my mother, 15 from Lily, 8 from Brad. 47 text messages, increasingly frantic.

I didn’t read them. Not yet. I finished my pad thai, watched an episode of the show I’d been meaning to catch up on, and went to bed in my quiet, perfectly climate-controlled, completely private apartment.

I slept better than I had in five years.

The next morning, I finally looked at my phone.

The texts told a story:

Mom, 11:30 a.m.: “Where are you? Your room is empty??”

Mom, 12:15 p.m.: “Maya call me right now. This isn’t funny.”

Lily, 1:00 p.m.: “Mom is freaking out. Where did you go? Did you really move out?”

Brad, 2:30 p.m.: “Yo this is messed up. You can’t just leave without saying anything.”

Mom, 3:00 p.m.: “MAYA ANSWER YOUR PHONE”

Lily, 4:00 p.m.: “Why did the internet stop working?”

Mom, 4:30 p.m.: “The heating isn’t working. Did you do something to the heating?”

Brad, 5:00 p.m.: “Dude seriously what’s going on with the wifi”

Mom, 6:00 p.m.: “Mr. Henderson called. He said you’re ending the lease??? What does that mean??? Call me RIGHT NOW”

Lily, 7:30 p.m.: “Maya this isn’t funny anymore. Mom is really upset. Can you please just explain what’s happening?”

Mom, 9:00 p.m.: “I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why are you doing this to your family?”

That last text sat on my screen like an accusation.

I typed a single response, sent it to the family group chat, and then muted the conversation:

“You asked me to move out. I moved out. The house lease is in my name, so I terminated it. Utilities are in my name, so I disconnected them. Insurance is in my name, so I cancelled the family policy. I paid for everything for five years. Now I don’t. You have until January 31st to find other arrangements. Good luck.”

Then I went to work.

The fallout was spectacular, though I only experienced it in fragments—forwarded messages from distant relatives, secondhand reports from the one cousin who still spoke to me, and one confrontational visit to my office that security handled before it reached my floor.

Here’s what I learned happened:

The heating was the first crisis. December in Atlanta isn’t Minnesota, but it gets cold enough that you notice when the heat stops working. My mother, who’d demanded that 75-degree tropical environment, suddenly found herself in a house that dropped to 62 degrees overnight. She called the gas company, discovered the account was closed, tried to open a new one, and found out she’d need a deposit of $350 plus proof of income.

She didn’t have $350 in accessible cash. She definitely didn’t have verifiable income.

The internet went next. Brad’s entire “day trading operation” depended on reliable connectivity. Without it, he couldn’t access his crypto exchanges, couldn’t stream his “investment advice” videos that had exactly 47 subscribers, couldn’t do anything except stare at his phone data plan and watch his opportunities “disappear.”

He tried to get new service. Every provider wanted a credit check and a deposit. Brad’s credit score, I later learned, was 580. The deposits they quoted him ranged from $200 to $500.

The rent crisis was slower but more catastrophic. Mr. Henderson, bless him, was a straightforward man. He’d called my mother exactly once, explained that I’d terminated the lease, and asked what her plans were. Did she want to take over the lease? He’d need to run her credit and verify her income.

My mother, who hadn’t worked in three years and whose credit had been destroyed by my father’s medical debt, couldn’t qualify.

What about Lily or Brad? Same problem. No income, bad credit, no rental history.

Mr. Henderson gave them until January 31st to vacate, exactly as the lease terms required. He wasn’t mean about it—he was just following the contract. The contract I’d signed, maintained, and now ended.

They tried to get me to change my mind. Oh, how they tried.

My mother showed up at my office building three times before security started recognizing her and turning her away at the lobby. She sent relatives to “talk sense into me.” She had her pastor call me—a kind man who gently suggested that family obligations transcended financial arrangements, and to whom I equally gently explained that moving out at my mother’s explicit request wasn’t abandonment, it was compliance.

Lily cried. She sent me voice memos, long rambling messages about how she didn’t know I’d paid for everything, how she thought Mom had savings, how she never meant for this to happen. “We just needed more space,” she sobbed in one message. “We didn’t mean you had to leave completely. We didn’t know you’d take everything with you.”

That line stuck with me. “We didn’t know you’d take everything with you.”

They’d thought I’d move out but continue paying for their lives. That I’d fund their comfort from a distance, asking nothing in return, accepting my role as the family bank without even the courtesy of a bedroom in the house I financed.

Brad was the only one who got angry instead of manipulative. He sent me a series of aggressive texts accusing me of “abandoning family,” of “being selfish,” of “ruining Lily’s chance at motherhood.” His final message: “You’re going to regret this. Family doesn’t forget.”

I blocked his number.

The cousin who still talked to me—Jennifer, who lived in California and had her own complicated relationship with our extended family—called me two weeks into the crisis.

“I heard about what happened,” she said carefully. “The family is losing their minds. Your mom is telling everyone you had a mental breakdown and abandoned them.”

“Did she mention the part where she told me to move out?”

“No, funnily enough, that detail isn’t making it into her version of events.”

I laughed, and it felt good. “I’m sure it’s not.”

“For what it’s worth,” Jennifer said, “I think you did the right thing. I’ve been watching you fund their entire existence for years. Everyone has. We just didn’t say anything because it wasn’t our business. But Maya? You deserved better than how they treated you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.

“What are they going to do? About the house?”

“I have no idea. That’s not my problem anymore.”

And it truly wasn’t.

By mid-January, my mother, Lily, and Brad had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a less desirable part of town. It was all they could afford—Lily’s part-time dental hygienist salary barely covered half the rent, Brad had to get a actual job (retail, at a sporting goods store, which he complained about constantly on social media), and my mother had to dip into the small savings she’d been hoarding for “emergencies.”

This, apparently, qualified as an emergency.

The apartment had thin walls, no dishwasher, and shared laundry in the basement. Brad’s streaming setup no longer fit. My mother complained about the noise from neighbors and the twenty-minute drive to her church.

They’d gone from comfortable suburban living to struggling urban reality in exactly thirty-six days.

I felt… nothing. Not satisfaction, not guilt, nothing. It was like watching a financial model play out exactly as predicted. You input the variables, you run the simulation, you get the result. Emotion doesn’t enter into it.

Meanwhile, my life improved dramatically.

Without the burden of supporting three additional adults, my savings rate jumped to 60% of my income. I maxed out my retirement accounts, built a proper emergency fund, started investing in a diversified portfolio beyond just the company stock options.

I bought art for my walls. Good art, from local galleries, pieces I actually liked instead of whatever was on sale at HomeGoods. I joined a gym that cost $200 a month and offered classes I actually wanted to take. I started dating—something I’d barely had energy for when I came home every night to a house full of people demanding my attention and resources.

I was thriving. They were surviving. The math was stark.

Three months after I moved out, Lily called from a number I didn’t recognize. I almost didn’t answer, but curiosity won.

“Maya? Please don’t hang up.” Her voice was small, defeated.

“I won’t. What do you need?”

“I’m pregnant.”

I waited, saying nothing.

“I’m eight weeks along. We just found out. And I… I don’t know what to do. We don’t have insurance. Brad’s job doesn’t offer benefits for the first six months. We can’t afford a doctor. Mom says we should ask you for help.”

“Of course she does.”

“I know I have no right. I know what we did was wrong. But Maya, this is your niece or nephew. Doesn’t that mean something?”

I looked out my apartment window at the Atlanta skyline glittering in the spring twilight. Somewhere in that city, my sister was pregnant and uninsured, living in a cramped apartment, realizing too late that actions have consequences.

“Lily,” I said carefully, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to really think about the answer. When Mom told me to move out at Christmas dinner, did you object? Did you say anything? Did you suggest maybe there was another solution?”

Silence.

“Did you,” I continued, “at any point in the five years I paid for everything, ever say thank you? Ever acknowledge what I was doing? Ever treat me like I was anything more than an ATM with a bedroom you wanted?”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I thought Mom was paying for things. I thought her savings—”

“You didn’t know because you didn’t ask. You didn’t care where the money came from as long as you were comfortable. And now you’re not comfortable, and suddenly I’m family again.”

“Maya, please—”

“I’ll send you information about Medicaid and free clinics. I’ll email you a budget template. I’ll give you the name of a financial advisor who does sliding-scale consultations. But I’m not going to be your insurance policy. I’m not going to be your emergency fund. I’m done being your safety net.”

“You’re really going to let your niece or nephew suffer because you’re mad at us?”

The manipulation was so transparent it would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

“Your child isn’t suffering. Your child doesn’t exist yet. And when they do exist, they’ll have two parents who will need to figure out how to support them, just like every other family in America. You’ll manage. People do.”

“We’re not ‘people,’ we’re your family.”

“No,” I said gently, “you’re people who happen to be related to me. There’s a difference.”

I hung up before she could respond.

That night, I did send her the information I’d promised—genuinely helpful resources for low-income pregnant women, clinics, programs, practical advice. I wasn’t cruel. I just wasn’t responsible.

Over the following months, I heard updates through the family grapevine: Lily qualified for Medicaid. Brad kept his retail job long enough to get benefits. They moved to a slightly bigger apartment, splitting the increased rent with a roommate. My mother found part-time work at another nail salon, her arthritis manageable with medication she finally couldn’t afford to skip.

They were figuring it out. Like adults. Without me.

My nephew—because it was a boy, I heard—was born in November. Healthy, full-term, normal delivery. Lily sent me a photo announcement. I looked at it once—a tiny wrinkled face, dark hair, the generic caption “Welcome to the world, Mason Chen Williams”—and felt neither connection nor obligation.

I sent a $100 gift card to Target. That seemed appropriate. Then I deleted the message and went back to my life.

It’s been two years now since that Christmas dinner. Two years since my mother told me to move out and I took her seriously enough to actually do it.

I’m thirty-four. I still work in derivatives trading. I still make excellent money. I bought a condo last year—a real purchase, my name on the deed, no family members involved.

I date occasionally, though nothing serious yet. I travel—real trips, to places I want to see, on schedules I control. I have friends from work and from my gym and from a book club I joined on a whim. None of them know the full story of what happened with my family. It’s not relevant to who I am now.

My mother sends me emails sometimes. Birthday messages. Holiday greetings. Occasional guilt trips disguised as family updates. I respond politely and minimally, the way you might respond to a distant acquaintance. The relationship exists in name only, maintained through obligation rather than affection.

Lily and I have an unspoken truce. We’re connected on social media. I see pictures of Mason—walking now, talking, looking like every other toddler. She never asks for money. I never offer advice. We exist in each other’s periphery, family by biology but strangers by choice.

Brad blocked me on everything after I refused to invest in his “sure thing” cryptocurrency venture. I consider this a gift.

Sometimes I wonder if I should feel worse about how things ended. If I should feel guilty for not being more forgiving, for not offering second chances, for not maintaining the family bonds that society insists are sacred and unbreakable.

But mostly I feel relieved.

Relieved that I’m not responsible for other people’s poor planning. Relieved that I don’t come home to demands and complaints and the constant low-level stress of being undervalued. Relieved that my money is mine, my space is mine, my life is mine.

I didn’t abandon my family. They dismissed me, and I simply accepted the dismissal and acted accordingly. They wanted me gone, so I left. They just didn’t expect me to leave completely, to take with me not just my physical presence but all the financial infrastructure that made their comfortable life possible.

They thought I was background noise. The boring office girl who paid the bills. They learned too late that background noise is still noise, and when it stops, the silence is deafening.

That Christmas dinner was the last meal I ever cooked for them. The last time I sacrificed my own comfort for theirs. The last time I made myself small so they could be comfortable.

When my mother told me to move out, she thought she was choosing Lily over me. What she actually did was force me to choose myself for the first time in my adult life.

And I made a choice I should have made years earlier.

I chose the person who actually valued me—which turned out to be me.

I chose the life that made sense mathematically and emotionally—which turned out to be one without them in it.

I chose freedom over obligation, dignity over duty, self-respect over family approval.

My mother wanted me to move out.

I did.

And I took everything that mattered with me—not out of spite, but because it was always mine to take.

The house in Buckhead is owned by someone else now. Different family, different story, different Christmas dinners around that same table where my mother once told me I wasn’t needed.

I don’t drive by it. I don’t think about it much. It’s just an address where I used to live, back when I believed that family meant something more than shared DNA and convenient access to my bank account.

I know better now.

I’m thirty-four years old. I live in a condo I own. I have a career I’m good at. I have a life that’s entirely, completely, blessedly mine.

And when people ask me about my family, I smile politely and say, “We’re not close.”

It’s the truth, and it’s enough.

THE END