I stopped confusing loyalty with self-abandonment.
I stopped believing that loving someone meant protecting them from the consequences of hurting me.
And I learned something I wish I had known eleven years earlier.
Sometimes losing a person isn’t the tragedy.
Sometimes the tragedy would have been staying.
One spring morning, I was standing in the garden when my phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
I saw your story online.
My husband cheated on me too.
I don’t know what to do.
I stared at the message.
Then typed:
Start by believing yourself.
I paused.
Then added:
You don’t have to destroy anyone.
You only have to stop letting them destroy you.
I sent it.
Then I put my phone away.
The wind moved through the trees.
Birds sang somewhere beyond the fence.
For a moment, everything was quiet.
Exactly the kind of quiet I had once feared.
