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Looking back at Josh, I knew if I wanted the freedom to do my own thing, I would have to give him up—and give up Boone, and, in a sense, my parents. I would have to give up all the gifts they continued to offer me because a gift weighed down by the imposition of gratitude becomes an expectation; ov…

He fell silent. So did I. I heard the crunch of fallen leaves and the happiest barks of unleashed dogs in a nearby dog run. Slowly, quietly, Josh asked, “You would give up hundreds of millions of dollars for the freedom to do your own thing?”

I looked across the street at a neighborhood deli and…

My ice cream was melting fast. “If you’re going to inherit everything soon, why don’t you go ahead and do the thing you want to do?”

“Because I’ll feel guilty inheriting something I didn’t work for. I think if we, you know, you and me, if we have a future, if I work a few more years at the compa…

As I made my way to Meru, I thought of Elisabeth, who had called me again after I tried to quit. We talked for ninety minutes. “I get it,” she said. “It’s still the most catty, intense girl-fighting culture, right?” I thought of how Val and Erin were not on speaking terms and avoided each other in …

Because I did not know how to get off the call I ended up being late to my three-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapy. When I arrived I talked a mile a minute about how I felt paralyzed by the need to make some big decisions. “I want to quit my life,” I told my therapist. “But I promised him five to ten …