When I found the texts, my first reaction wasn’t to break down crying.
It wasn’t “Her, really?”
It wasn’t to dump a glass of water on your stupid, drunk face as you slept in the next room (though that came later).
It wasn’t to smash the phone, or yell.
No. After all we’d been through over the past decade — the countless breaks and reconciliations, the months I covered both of our rents, the emergency room visits, the wasted Al-Anon meetings — my first thought was: I finally have a reason.