Chapter Nineteen
(Sky)
I never thought I'd do it.
To choose myself.
Every day for seventeen years, my body, my heart, my life belonged to him. To Evan. To keeping him fed, clothed, safe. To surviving for both of us. To sacrificing… everything.
But that morning, something inside me broke and rebuilt at the same time.
I looked in the mirror and saw a woman who had been invisible to everyone—including the boy I loved most. A woman who had carried a city of debts, bruises, exhaustion, and heartbreak quietly. A woman who had loved so loudly it embarrassed the world, and yet, somehow, never herself.
I packed a bag. Simple things: a jacket, some money, my notebook. Nothing extravagant. Just enough to exist for a while without being "Mama" 24/7.
Evan was at the table, headphones on, scrolling his phone. I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I'm… going out for a bit," I said softly.
He didn't look up. "Cool," he muttered, as if I was always invisible anyway.
But I felt it differently this time.
I wasn't invisible. I was choosing myself.
I walked out the door, taking a deep breath of cold New York air. The streets were alive with strangers, each step a reminder that I could still move, still exist, still be more than sacrifice.
I let the taxi take me where it would. I let myself feel the freedom that comes with small, deliberate choices. I let the thought linger: maybe for the first time in years, I mattered.
Even if just once.
Because if I never do this—if I never allow myself to choose me—then everything I've given, everything I've survived, means nothing.
And I refuse to live a life of nothing.