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The water was warm, almost too warm against the cold air, and I stayed beneath the surface longer than usual. Not to forget. But to empty myself.
To make room. The next morning, I woke early and sat on the wooden deck wrapped in a blanket. I sipped coffee and thought about the version of myself that used to make excuses for how Bradley treated me.
I had stopped making excuses the day my back hit glass.
Now I looked back with sharper eyes, and I began making new outlines—not for court dates or documents, but for how I would live if I no longer needed to explain myself to anyone. That same day, I walked into town and stopped at a quiet bookstore I used to visit years ago. The owner, a woman named Ruth, still remembered me.
We didn’t talk much. I picked out a few books, mostly about quiet women who changed their lives late in life, and left without announcing who I was or why I was there. I didn’t need to be the woman with the folder.
Not today. By the third day, the cabin felt like it belonged to me. Not because I owned it.
But because I had brought myself there by choice. There’s something powerful about reclaiming space, even if temporary. It’s the difference between escape and return.
I wrote letters that night. Not to Bradley. Not to Juliana.
Letters to myself. To the version of me at forty who spent birthdays alone because the family forgot. To the version at fifty who helped them buy their first house but wasn’t invited to their housewarming.
To the version at sixty who had quietly paid their credit card debt when they couldn’t make the minimum. I wrote to each of those women and told them they did what they could with the knowledge they had. I forgave them.
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