The staff informed them, calmly, that a protective order had been executed, barring all three of them from any contact with me whatsoever.

And for the first time in ten years, they could not close a door on me, could not corner me, could not raise their voices and dictate the terms of my own life.

The power that had felt, for a decade, as fixed and permanent as gravity — the absolute certainty that they controlled me and I could only endure — had simply evaporated overnight, revealed to have been nothing more solid than my own belief that I had no other choice.

I did have another choice.