She used to cry in silence, then wipe her face before anyone saw. Now she doesn’t need to hide. The tears taught her things no comfort ever could. She learned how to grieve without breaking, how to burn without turning to ash.

There’s no revenge in her. Just distance. A clean kind. The kind that doesn’t explain, doesn’t warn, doesn’t wait. She left the door open, not out of weakness, but because she had nothing to prove anymore.

He tried to reduce her to the version he could manage. But she outgrew the room he built for her, the one with no light and too many mirrors. Now she carries her own reflection like armor. Unapologetically whole.

This version of me has boundaries that don’t shake. A voice that doesn’t waver. A truth that doesn’t flinch. She is both storm and shelter, and nothing about her needs approval.

What he used to call “too much” was actually the part of me that survived. The part that rebuilt, quietly, until it became something he could never access again. And she is mine now. All of her.