Sometimes I counted the men of my past like rosary beads. He loved me. He wanted to sleep with me. Even just, he looked at me. Even just, I came into being, for a moment, because I was visible to him. It was as if I’d won by making these men want me. But what game? For what prize?

After leaving my marriage, I felt—for the first time—such deep shame when I told people that I’d been the one to end it. I felt no safety, or power, in being the one who’d left. For many months I was like a deer frozen in the middle of a field, holding perfectly still. And when I stopped being a scared animal and looked around, I saw nothing but open winter fields, bleak and withered, full of all the pain we’d made.

It would be simpler if conviction burned away everything else. But it doesn’t make consequences disappear; it just straightens your spine when you force yourself to look at them. Over time I came to wonder if my shame was actually just sorrow in disguise. My divorce was slowly teaching me that grief did not have to wear the clothes of guilt.