One afternoon, as I was walking in the garden, my mother came over with a soft smile.
"You look different," she said.
"Different how?"
"More present, with that light in your eyes... It's you again, my love."
I smiled. She was right. I was no longer waiting for a version of me that had been stuck in a correct but empty marriage.
Something was starting. Still fragile. Still uncertain. But mine. And as I closed one of my notebooks that night, with new notes written on old pages, I understood something with a clarity that surprised me.
I didn't leave to be persecuted, I didn't leave to be missed. I left to find myself.
And this time, I didn't think I'd get lost again.
Time didn't heal everything, but it did order enough to let me move forward.
Months passed. I didn't count them one by
