I learned to apologize for things that were not my fault, because the apology ended the tension faster than the truth did.

I learned, in a thousand small surrenders, to make myself smaller so that his ego and his mother’s pride would have more room, and I told myself this was maturity, this was what marriage asked, this was love.

It was not love.

It was training.

They had spent five years teaching me to doubt my own eyes, so that when the numbers in the trust statements did not add up, my first instinct was not they are stealing from me but I must be reading it wrong. That instinct is the whole game.

That doubt is the thing an abuser installs in you so carefully that you carry it yourself and do their work for them.