After everything ended, people expected me to become inspirational.
I hated that.
They wanted the story to become:
Cancer survivor defeats abusive husband and starts a beautiful new life.
I did start a new life.
It was not beautiful every day.
Sometimes it was boring.
Sometimes lonely.
Sometimes I cried because a restaurant played the song Daniel and I danced to at our wedding.
Sometimes I missed him.
That confused people.
“How can you miss someone who did that?”
Easy.
I missed the man I married.
I missed the years before fear.
I missed Sunday mornings.
Inside jokes.
Road trips.
The version of myself who did not know what would happen.
Missing a person is not a legal argument for letting them back into your life.
I learned that in therapy.
I also learned that I had spent too much time dividing Daniel into two men.
Good Daniel.
Bad Daniel.
