chapter 16
Update 5: The ring and the comments
The internet, because it sees everything and misunderstands half of it on schedule, had a field day with the dinner photo after I had foolishly shown it to a friend who showed it to another friend who posted it cropped. The comments were brutal in that performative way we all pretend is justice. Someone DM’d me a screenshot of a thread with a thousand upvotes calling Matthew an “emotional minimalist” (accurate) and his “mistress” a “predator.” I closed the app, sat in the bathroom, and realized my appetite for strangers taking my side had evaporated. It had been a comfort before. Now it felt like eating dry sugar.
I went back to the original post. Zoomed in. The ring wasn’t ours. The engraved line on the inside wasn’t there. The plate—god help me—was a different restaurant entirely, with a different silver pattern. I had literally projected my marriage onto a stranger’s hand because the lighting was right.
I took a screenshot of my own cognitive bias and sent it to my therapist. She sent back four words: “Catch the old story.” It became a little chant I used every time I felt my brain sprint to the worst interpretation. Catch the old story. Name the evidence. Choose the present.
Update 6: The board and the other shoe
While family court was doing its thing, corporate life did its other thing—which is to say, a merger rumor became a headline became a week of emergency meetings. I only know this because Mr. Clark, my manager, called to ask if I would take a month-long contractor role, remote, generous rate, to handle a reporting backlog. “You don’t owe us,” he said. “We owe you. But if you want to do something that’s yours, not his, the door is cracked open.”
I took it.