The real poison is far quieter than that, and I know, because I drank it slowly for the better part of a decade before I understood what it was.

The real poison is the slow, silent normalization of your sacrifices.

It is what happens when the person you love gradually stops seeing your generosity as a gift and begins to experience it as a utility — as the way the world is arranged, the water in the tap, the thing that is always there and requires no gratitude because it has stopped registering as a choice.

It happens by degrees, so slowly that neither of you notices the exact day it changes, until one morning you realize that the person you have been carrying no longer sees you carrying them.