For nine years, I had quietly carried Christmas for my husband Trevor’s family. I planned the meals, bought the groceries, cleaned the house, prepared the breakfast casserole, changed the sheets, and somehow made eighteen people feel as though everything happened effortlessly. Nobody asked what it cost me. They simply expected it. That Christmas, after reading the family group chat and seeing how casually everyone discussed my work, something inside me finally went still. I decided I would not host. I would not explain. I would simply leave.

I went to Galveston for nine days, renting a room with a gas fireplace from a woman named Perpetua, who lent me paperbacks and never asked questions. I ate dinner at six every evening and did not wash a single dish. Brenna called eleven times that first evening. I ignored them all. On the third day, sitting on a bench facing the water, I finally answered. I said only, “I read the group chat.” Then I waited, because for the first time, I had nothing left to say.