Every tender moment I could remember with Derek reorganized itself, in the light of those two words, into something colder: not love, but management.

Not affection, but maintenance of a useful asset.

I do not tell you this for sympathy.

I tell you because I think many people stay in situations like mine precisely because they cannot bear to believe this truth — that the person harming them does not see them as a person — and keep hoping, against all evidence, that the love was real and the cruelty was the aberration.

For me, get the papers made it impossible to keep hoping.