But sitting across the table from the actual man — thinner, grayer, the charisma gone out of him like air out of a punctured thing — I felt almost nothing at all, and the nothing was more complete a victory than any gloating could have been.

Because I understood, looking at him, that the Marius I had married had never really existed; he had been a performance too, like Sena’s affection, like the doctored video, a confident surface stretched over a frightened, greedy, fundamentally small man who had spent our entire marriage terrified that someone would notice he had built nothing himself.

I had spent ten years mistaking that performance for a person.

And here at last was the person, with the performance stripped away by his own choices, and there was simply not very much there.

You cannot hate a hollow thing.

You can only stop mistaking it for something worth your time.