I deserve everything I want in life.

Start with the wanting rather than the deserving, because the wanting is where most of the confusion sits. Write down what you actually want and a good half of the list will turn out to belong to someone else — a parent's idea of a decent career, a version of a life you admired at nineteen and never revisited.

The items that survive that inspection are usually modest and specific. Work that doesn't hollow you out. One or two people who know the whole story.

Those are what this is really about. You're allowed to want them plainly, without first building a case.