At 11 PM, she didn’t go to bed. She dragged the ironing board into the living room. For two hours, she pressed my shirts, smoothing every wrinkle with terrifying precision. She looked ready to collapse, swaying on her feet.
The “cheating” I suspected was a lie I told myself to excuse my own negligence. She wasn’t giving her energy to another man; she was pouring it into a black hole of ungratefulness—me. I saw the “headaches” for what they were: exhaustion.
I closed the laptop. The anger I had felt earlier was gone, replaced by a nausea so intense I almost threw up. I had treated her invisible labor as a natural resource, something that just *happened*.