Long before the dramatic exit, in the years that look, from outside, like pure passive suffering, a person is very often doing the real work of leaving in a thousand invisible increments — noticing, quietly; saving, quietly; keeping a record; hiding a card; protecting one thing that is still hers; refusing, in some small private chamber of herself, to fully believe the story she is being told about her own worthlessness.

None of it looks like courage.

It looks like just barely surviving.

But it is not just surviving.

It is construction, disguised as endurance.

And then one day something happens — a click of a deadbolt, a demand too outrageous to absorb — and the woman appears to leap, fully formed, into her freedom, and everyone marvels at her sudden strength.