I understand now that it is simply a measurement, neutral and useful, of what a relationship was actually made of all along.

What I gained was worth more than what did not survive.

I gained a husband who was learning, week by difficult week, to stand between me and the people who would use me, which is a thing I had not known I was allowed to want from a marriage until I had briefly had a marriage without it.

I gained back the low hum of dread, switched off, permanently, so that a family event was now simply an event and not an ordeal I had to steel myself for and recover from.

And I gained the knowledge, bought at the price of two years and one spectacularly uncomfortable birthday, that I would never again mistake being needed for being loved, or being useful for being chosen, or the warmth of a fire I was feeding with myself for the warmth of people who would have kept me warm for nothing.