No one ever does.

I chose, a thousand separate times, to be generous, to be understanding, to sacrifice just this once, and the thousand small generosities added up, over eleven years, to a woman who had given away nearly everything she was and called it love.

The reversal, when it came, was not gradual at all.

It came all at once, on a porch, with a deed in my hand, because the accumulated erasure of eleven years can sometimes be undone in a single afternoon of finally standing up.

But I never forgot the lesson of how slowly I had gone down, and I have watched, ever since, for the first small reasonable sacrifice that is the beginning of the long descent, and I have learned to say no to it, gently and completely, while it is still small.