I Let You Go

by Clare Mackintosh

Such a small impact on the world, yet the very center of my own.

I think of the girl who would spend hours getting ready to go out: music playing, makeup scattered about the bathroom, the air thick with perfume. I had no idea, back then, what real life was like.

I can’t remember the last time someone looked after me like this. It was always me doing the cooking, the tidying, the homemaking. So many years spent trying to build a happy family, only to have it come crashing down around me.

I denied anything was wrong: first because I was too blinded by love to see the cracks in my relationship, and later because I was too ashamed to admit that I had stayed for so long with a man who hurt me so much.