It accumulates.

No single night of it would have looked like anything to an outsider; a removed group chat, a favored child, a sharp word about spoiling, a wife who apologizes too much.

Each piece was small enough to dismiss, small enough that I dismissed it myself, a thousand times, telling myself I was being dramatic, being sensitive, making a production of nothing — using his words about me because I had heard them so often they had become my own.

That is how it works.