I am in charge of my life.

Being in charge is not the same as being in control, and the difference matters most on days when very little is going your way. A shift manager doesn't decide whether the delivery turns up. They decide what happens next.

Most of a life runs on that second thing. The diagnosis, the redundancy, the person who left: none of it was put to a vote. What gets voted on is the response, over and over, in increments that go unwitnessed.

It is a narrow authority. It is also the only one anybody has ever actually had.