In the years between the April conversation my senior year and the Sunday dinner at thirty-two, I had not been a person who said nothing about any of this. I want to be accurate about that, because the version of this story where I was completely silent for fourteen years is not quite right.
I’d said things. In different contexts, to different people, with different levels of completeness.
I’d told Sophie most of it. I’d told a college roommate — a woman I’ve lost touch with — part of it during a late-night conversation in our second year about family and money, the kind of conversation that happens when you’re twenty and sharing a room and the lights are off. I’d told a therapist I saw briefly in my mid-twenties, during a period when I was trying to figure out why I felt an inexplicable guilt every time I spent money on myself.
The therapist, to her credit, connected some dots I hadn’t connected. She asked what the story was in my family about money and who it was for. I said I wasn’t sure I understood the question. She asked who in my family got financial support when they needed it. I said my brother had. She asked if I had. I said I’d taken loans.
She said, “And how do you feel about that?”
I said I felt fine about it. I’d managed.
She said, “Is managed the same as fine?”
I sat with that for a while. I left therapy three months later when my insurance changed and the cost became more than I could comfortably absorb. I’d gotten some things from those months. I hadn’t gotten everything sorted out.