The trap is built out of your own good qualities.

Your patience, your loyalty, your willingness to sacrifice, your reluctance to make a scene: these are not the flaws that keep you trapped.

They are virtues, turned into a cage by people who knew how to exploit them.

I did not stay for ten years because I was weak or blind.

I stayed because I was loyal and patient and kind, and those were exactly the tools they used to build the walls.

Understanding that let me forgive the woman I had been.