what's different now

I know I've said things were going to get better before. I understand if that doesn't mean much right now. But I need you to know what's actually changed in how I see things, because I think I was genuinely lost for a while and I hate that it cost us so much.

I don't care if I make $100,000 or $300,000 a year anymore. I really don't. I let that number become the whole point and I lost sight of everything that actually matters to me, and you are at the top of that list. You always have been. I don't want to spend my twenties grinding toward something I don't even want, and I don't want to look back one day and realize I traded the best thing in my life for a slightly better job offer. That would kill me.

There is an end to the distance. When I graduate I'm not chasing a city or a salary. I want to live somewhere I'm happy, work remotely, and actually build something of my own on the side. I still want to provide for my family, I still want to get there, but I want to do it on my own terms and not spend my life depending on a company that could lay me off tomorrow and never thought about me once. I want to be there while you're in med school. I want to come home to you. That's not me saying what sounds good, that's genuinely what I see when I think about my future.

And I should have been getting on that bus to Binghamton way more than I did. I'm sorry for every time I didn't. You were always choosing me and I wasn't matching that the way I should have been.

I'm not asking you to forget any of it. I'm just asking you to believe that I finally see it clearly, and that you are worth so much more effort than I was giving.