It feels like agreeing.

Nobody held me down.

Nobody made me stop wearing lipstick or stop closing deals or stop expecting kindness.

What happened was quieter and more insidious than force — Trent narrated a version of me, patiently, over and over, day after day, until I began to narrate it too.

His voice became my voice.

When I looked in a mirror and thought you’ve let yourself go, those were his words, but they had been in my head so long that I had stopped hearing them as his.

That is how it works, the real damage of a man like that.