I met Nick twelve years ago and thought I’d struck gold. It was a lazy summer Saturday — friends, music from a dying Bluetooth speaker, cheap beer, and a grill. He walked up, crooked smile in place, tilted my sunglasses, and joked, “You look like you lost a fight with the sun.” I laughed until my cheeks hurt, and by sunset, we felt inseparable.
Two years later, we were married under twinkling fairy lights. Three years later, Emma arrived with a wail that could shake walls. Lily followed two years after, quieter but just as determined. Life felt… perfect. A cozy house, two kids, a dog, bills paid on time. Not glamorous, but ours.
Then, slowly, something in Nick changed. After Lily’s birth, the warmth faded. Subtle at first — less eye contact, more time buried in his phone. Then came the criticism: missed trash duty, toys on the floor, dinner slightly cold — all became proof I was failing at everything. Arguments felt like walking barefoot over a minefield. I kept telling myself: things will improve. One day. Always a “when.”
The breaking point didn’t seem dramatic at first. Driving home from his mother’s, the girls asleep in the back, I thought maybe we’d make it without incident. But thirty miles from home, a mustard shortage at a gas station burger joint set him off. For twenty minutes, his words pummeled me: careless, lazy, useless. Then, at a Target parking lot, he slammed on the brakes, yanked open my door, and coldly ordered, “Get out.”
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