The seasons had stripped you bare, much like the trees shedding their leaves, leaving you wondering—would you, too, be replaced once you were no longer lovely? Nine months you carried his child, alone in a bed too wide, aching feet walking a path only you traveled.

Love was supposed to be a sanctuary, a shelter from the cold, but in the quiet of your nights, you realized—you had mistaken a cage for a home.

He had found warmth elsewhere, and when you whispered your hurt, the world only echoed back: Endure. For your daughter. For survival. So you did. You swallowed the bitterness, rationed the love he no longer gave, stretched every coin because his mother’s needs always came first.

But when she sneered at your child—your daughter—when she dared to belittle the life you had sacrificed for, the dam finally broke. Words sharper than knives spilled from your lips, cutting, slicing, wounding, but she had already poisoned you long ago.

Then, he arrived. And like a fool, you hoped. Hoped he would see you. Hoped he would fight for you. But his glare was ice, his words were verdicts. "What the hell are you doing to my mom? She’s your mother, too. How could you?"

Love had not just died—it had been trampled, spat on, discarded like something he had long since outgrown. And in that moment, you understood. You were not his wife, not his partner—just an inconvenience he had the misfortune of promising forever to.

"If you do something stupid like that again, I won’t be this lenient with you. Do you hear me? You should understand your place." The final blow. The final nail in the coffin of what you once believed was love.

And as the weight of it all settled in your chest, suffocating yet strangely light, a quiet, devastating truth whispered through your bones—losing him was not the worst thing that could happen. No, the worst thing had already happened. You had loved a man who never truly saw you. And now, you were finally ready to let go.