“I knew I shouldn’t leave it at this, that I needed to stand up and maybe get a little mean and self-righteous, and tell him to give me my folder and then walk out of there. But I couldn’t. I’d like to believe that it was out of some sort of compassion: that I was looking at a broken man and choosing not to break him further. And maybe that was part of it. 

“But it also had something to do with my own private disgrace, at how little money I had and at how badly I managed it. It felt to me like it was just a facet of something larger and more troublesome. An inability to take much of anything very seriously. Without Len I’d have to show that folder to someone else, who’d probably look down on me. Len was less my accountant than the guardian of my shame, and in that respect I still needed his services.” 

-From This American Life "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time," originally aired in January 2006.