I took only what was.

The difference is the whole of the thing.

The judge granted the divorce, enforced every one of the credit agreements Preston had signed and violated, and issued a permanent restraining order barring Preston from ever approaching me again.

And that was that.

The marriage that had begun with his family’s condescension and ended with his public cruelty was dissolved, cleanly, on paper, in a courtroom, with my name restored to me and my life returned to my own hands, and I walked out of that courthouse feeling not triumphant, exactly, but unburdened, the way you feel when you finally set down a weight you had carried so long you had stopped noticing it was there.

Chapter 17 — What I Understood About Power