How many working mothers have sat in a family court while the hours they bled for their children were read back to them as evidence of indifference?

He hadn’t invented the strategy.

He’d just aimed a common, ugly, effective weapon at me, and been confident I was too worn down to dodge it.

What he had not counted on — what men like him never count on — was that the same exhaustion he mistook for weakness was, in fact, the residue of a strength he had no way to measure.

You do not survive a decade of twelve-hour nights by being fragile.