My endurance, which I had imagined as a kind of noble strength, had functioned in practice as a reward system, paying out approval and continued generosity in exchange for worse and worse treatment, until the arrangement produced its inevitable result.

A person who is never once made to feel the cost of their cruelty does not become kinder over time.

They become bolder.

I had spent six years being kind to people in a way that made them crueler, and calling it love, and the bill for all that misplaced kindness came due, at last, at two o’clock in the morning, glowing on a phone.

I understand, I had written.