Sometimes you just wake up and it's like the air itself is wrong, like you've been breathing someone else's air for so long and now it’s gone and there’s nothing but this strange, thin emptiness in your lungs. And you look around your apartment, the one you fought tooth and nail to keep, the one that still smells faintly of stale coffee and something else you can’t quite place, and you realize every single thing in it, every print on the wall, every battered paperback on the shelf, even the mug you're holding, it’s all just… him. You know that feeling when you're going through old photos, and you see yourself in clothes you'd never pick, doing things you never really wanted to do, laughing a laugh that sounds a little too forced, and it’s like looking at a stranger? That’s me, every single day now, but it’s not just the photos, it’s my entire life. Fifteen years, from when I was barely out of high school and still believed in fairytales and happily ever afters and all that garbage, and now I’m 27 and I don’t even know what kind of music I actually like or what flavor ice cream I’d pick without thinking about if *he’d* like it. I remember him saying once, about my old beat-up guitar, “Why don’t you try something a little less… folk?” and suddenly I was selling it, and buying a keyboard, and listening to all his synth-pop, and thinking I *loved* it, really believed I did, but now the silence in this apartment is so loud I can hear the echo of a guitar strum I never made. And every single choice I’ve made, every hobby I picked up, every cheap little thing I saved for and bought, it was all for him, or because of him, or filtered through his eyes. And that's the part that really stings, the real kick in the gut, that I didn't even notice it happening, not until the divorce papers were signed and his side of the closet was empty and then it was just… me. And now I’m here, staring at a blank wall, and my rent is due next week and I’m barely making it and every single thing I thought I was, every little piece of my identity, it’s just gone. It’s like someone came in and took out all the parts of my brain that knew how to like things, and left behind this hollow echo, and I’m just supposed to find a new me in the wreckage of a life I didn’t even realize wasn't mine. And the anger, it just bubbles up, hot and thick, not even at him, not really, but at myself, for being so damn blind, so damn eager to please, so willing to just vanish into someone else's shadow for so long. And it's not going away, this anger, it just sits there, a heavy stone in my stomach, and I don’t even know what to do with it.