There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.
Yes, these are bruises from fighting and I'm okay with that.
Just let your hand drop; and let fate decide for you.
Some people still think knowledge is power.
Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.
I remember selling my first short story and thinking, Oh my god, I sold something for fifty dollars! That gives me the authority to say I'm a writer and to actually write more things! It legitimized the activity.