I was not weak.

I was slowly, expertly, deliberately convinced, over years, to distrust my own eyes.

And it almost cost me my mother.

I have needed to say those sentences to myself many times, out loud, because the hardest part of surviving a man like Richard is not leaving him.

It is forgiving the version of yourself who stayed.

For a long time after, I was crueler to that woman — the one who hid her keys in a grocery bag, who made excuses, who believed she’s just acting over her own mother’s gasp of pain — than I ever was to Richard.