I looked over at Ben.
“I’ve got work — “
“I’m Free. Take It.”
“Olive and I will go on an adventure.”
A year earlier, I would have arranged my entire life around his before he ever asked me to.
I would have said no, it’s fine, I’ll pass on this one before I’d finished reading the email.
This time I didn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
What I Understand Now
For eleven years, I believed that love meant adjusting quietly enough that the other person never noticed what it cost.
I was genuinely proud of how well I did it. I thought the seamlessness was the love.
It isn’t. It’s just invisible labor with a nicer name on it.
And the terrible math of it is this: if you adjust silently enough for long enough, the other person stops being able to see you at all. Not because they don’t love you. Because you removed yourself from the frame so skillfully that eventually they forgot to look for you in it.
