It was easier to obsess over concrete factors, like money, than to confront my existential and actual helplessness. I thought a lot about other mistresses during those days, the ones in positions more precarious than mine because they were in love with their married men or completely relied upon them financially. When you’re the other woman, there’s no dignified way to announce yourself. You blast into his larger life like a bomb, or you don’t enter at all. What radical loneliness those women must feel in these situations. So much loss, including the horrible finality of being closed out of his life and public record of the same.