The apartment was smaller than our rented house, but it felt different in a way I hadn't expected. There was no third bedroom full of wedding supplies, no closet divided carefully into his and hers, and no dining table that held memories I was afraid to touch. The windows looked toward the city, where lights moved after dark and people crossed the sidewalks with destinations I knew nothing about. I signed the lease and felt something like nervousness mixed with anticipation, a feeling I hadn't associated with housing in a long time.
Moving day was the first genuinely enjoyable Saturday I'd had in months. Wyatt recruited two friends, and we spent the morning carrying furniture up an elevator while Baxter watched from the backseat of his owner's truck. Somebody brought breakfast sandwiches, somebody else complained about the weight of my books, and I discovered that laughter was still possible even when the reason for being together had nothing to do with romance. By evening my couch faced the window, my coffee maker was connected, and the last box of dishes was open on the counter.
I bought a plant because the living room looked too bare. It was an inexpensive green thing from a garden center, and I placed it on the windowsill with no particular thought about whether I could keep it alive. A week later I noticed new leaves beginning to form, and the small evidence of growth gave me more satisfaction than it deserved. I started paying attention to the plant's watering schedule because being responsible for something uncomplicated felt reassuring.
I also began speaking with a therapist. I had been reluctant to admit how much the breakup affected me because I could still perform well at work and pay my bills, and I assumed that meant I was dealing with it adequately. But I kept waking from dreams about the wedding, and sometimes an ordinary notification sound would send a small jolt of dread through my chest. The therapist helped me understand that functioning and healing were not the same thing.
We talked about boundaries, about trust, and about the difference between self-respect and the need to appear unhurt. I told her that I was proud of not begging Kinsley to come home, then admitted that I'd sometimes spent entire evenings imagining conversations in which she finally understood every detail of what she'd done to me. The therapist asked whether my imaginary speeches made me feel more secure afterward. I laughed because they didn't; they made me angry all over again.
She encouraged me to stop treating the breakup as a case I needed to win. I already had enough information to make a decision, and the people who cared about me did not require a complete courtroom presentation before believing I was hurting. The fact that Kinsley had lied was important, but endlessly proving it to an imaginary audience was keeping me emotionally attached to the night I wanted to leave behind. That observation unsettled me more than anything we'd discussed before.