By this point, he'd put rings on my finger to show people I was unavailable. I wish I could say that was the moment everything changed. That it somehow made him feel secure. That he finally believed I loved him. That the accusations stopped. That I didn't have to prove where I was anymore. But that's not how it worked. Because none of this had ever really been about whether I loved him enough. It wasn't about whether I'd given him enough reassurance. It wasn't about whether I

Eventually, I had a meeting at work. I'd been off for so long because of everything that had been happening. The injuries. The hospital. The fear. The constant chaos that had somehow become my normal life. And I walked into that meeting carrying something I'd become very good at carrying: secrets. I'd spent months giving people tiny pieces of the truth. Enough to explain an injury. Enough for somebody to realise I wasn't okay. Enough for a nurse to send me to A&E. But never e