Chapter 11

• I did not plan to break.
• I had believed I could navigate any storm. But the morning light was sharper than I expected. It cut through every corner of the loft, illuminating the rough edges I had tried so hard to hide. It found the tremors in my hands as I wrapped my fingers around my coffee mug. I had not slept enough for determination to smooth the weight of fatigue. Every decision from the last week pressed heavier than the one before.
• At my desk, I stared at the silence as though it were a mirror. The complaint letters sat in a neat folder to my right. The injunction notices were pinned to the corkboard behind my laptop like trophies claimed by someone else. I looked at them and felt the weight of what they truly were. Not threats. Not missteps. But declarations. Documents built to dismantle. And they had begun to chip away at everything I had created.