The silence frightened me at first.

Then I understood it wasn’t abandonment.

It was freedom.

I bought a bright yellow coffee mug that Devon would have called tacky, and learned to make small choices without justifying them, and each small choice walked me a little further back toward myself.

I had not understood, until I lived alone, how much of a self is made of small ungoverned choices.

Devon had never once hit me; I want to be clear about that, because people hear abuse and reach for bruises, and there were none.