That decision — to hide my own strength so that a man could feel large beside me — had been the single greatest mistake of my life, and I want to name it plainly, because I think a great many women make some version of it and call it love.

I did not do it in a single choice.

That is the thing about self-erasure; it is never one decision, it is ten thousand small ones, each so reasonable in the moment that you cannot see the shape they are making.

Early in the marriage I noticed that Alejandro shrank a little whenever my father’s name came up, whenever the size of my inheritance brushed against the conversation, and because I loved him and because I mistook his fragility for tenderness, I began, without ever deciding to, to make myself smaller in those moments.

I let a figure go unmentioned.

I let him pick up a check I had, in effect, already funded.