Some mornings I’d quietly slip out of bed while it was still dark. I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t make a sound. I just needed that one hour where I wasn’t being watched, evaluated, or interrupted. An hour where I could breathe without managing someone else’s reaction to it.

I’d make coffee slow. Let the warmth settle in my hands. Sometimes I’d just sit in silence, not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I was tired of twisting every sentence into something digestible. There was no one there to flinch if I got too quiet. No one to accuse me of a mood I wasn’t having. No one to punish me with silence for speaking too honestly.

That hour wasn’t just a break from noise. It was a break from performance. A small sliver of peace in a house that otherwise required me to constantly translate myself into safer versions.

And when I think back on that time, what hurts most isn’t the conflict. It’s how much I needed to be alone just to feel safe in my own home. How my nervous system had to brace for the day the moment he woke up.

That hour held more truth than all the apologies that never came. More comfort than the cold shoulder that followed every moment I asked for more. I used to call it “me time,” but really, it was survival.