I got home. I turned on the lamp — I’d replaced the overhead bulb two weeks before, but I preferred the lamp. I made tea. I sat at my kitchen table, which is where I have apparently made most of the significant decisions of my adult life, and I thought about what comes next.
I have twenty-five thousand and eight hundred dollars in savings. I subtracted the course cost. I’d kept a small cushion for the gift and incidentals. The number is still exactly what it needs to be: an emergency fund, a foundation, a set of options that belong to me.
I have a brother who is, for the first time in a long time, asking how I actually am. I have parents who made corrections that were late and imperfect and real. I have a sister-in-law who sends me wedding gallery links and who brought yellow tulips to Sunday dinner before any of this happened.
I have Sophie, who made me look in my old email, which is the single most useful thing anyone did in this entire situation.
I have fourteen years of a story being told wrong, and I have corrected it, and the correction is not complete and probably never will be entirely, and the hurt and the love are still in the same place, the way they’ve always been.
I’m thirty-two. I have a data analysis course on Monday evenings. I have plans.
I think that’s the right place to start.
The Year of the Statistics Class