And then he was gone, and the process shut down, and I discovered how much of me it had been eating.

I had energy I hadn’t had in years.

I read books again.

I called old friends I’d let drift because Damon found them tiresome.

I cooked things that took a long time, for no one but myself, on a Sunday, with music on.

None of it was dramatic.

That was the point.

The freedom did not announce itself with fireworks; it arrived as the simple, staggering luxury of a mind that belonged, once again, entirely to me — a mind no longer holding open a room for someone else’s storms.