When My Ex-Husband Brought His Young Mistress to Our Son’s Pool Party to Humiliate Me, I Introduced Everyone to My Handsome New “Boyfriend” — He Laughed and Called It Pathetic, Certain I’d Hired an Actor, Until the Man Opened a Small Case and Said One Sentence That Drained the Color From His Face

Look at you.

Of course a man like Daniel wouldn’t want you.

Of course you’re pathetic.

Shrink.

Apologize.

Disappear. That is the real damage a person like Luke does — not the insults themselves, which fade, but the installation of their own voice inside you, so that they can go on diminishing you even when they aren’t in the room, using your own mind as the instrument.

For nine years I had carried his voice, and mistaken it for my own, and let it make me smaller and smaller.