The next morning, I sat at the dining table with a slice of cold pizza and opened my laptop. My lawyer’s number was already in my contacts.
“Let’s proceed,” I typed in a message to him. “I’m ready.”
No drama. No theatrics. Just a quiet decision to stop living small.
Why It Was Never About the Chicken
Afterward, Neil liked to tell people we divorced over “a stupid roast chicken,” always with a little laugh, as though I were absurd.
But it was never about the chicken.
It was about the constant rules he made up — twenty-two of them by my count.
It was about being corrected in public and private. About the emails he rewrote “so you don’t sound unprofessional.” About the clothes he didn’t like, the words I supposedly overused, the tone that was “too sharp.”
It was about hearing the word “hysterical” so often that I started to believe it might be true.
It was about becoming so small, so carefully contained, that I forgot how it felt to take up space in my own home.
Learning to Live Without Fear
The divorce was messy. Neil fought over almost everything.
“You’re throwing away twenty years over a misunderstanding,” he told me while I packed my books.
But I didn’t answer. Because I knew the truth.
In the months after he was gone, I caught myself moving in the kitchen like a woman still under inspection — keeping my steps quick, my hands ready to defend whatever I was doing.
It took time to stop glancing over my shoulder when I cooked.
It took time to sit down and eat without bracing for criticism.
A Different Kind of Love
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