Chapter 12 — Dissolution

There wasn’t a moment Molly could point to where separation stopped. She still felt irritation and attachment and pride and worry because those things did not disappear, but they didn’t fix her in place or decide what everything meant anymore. She started to notice that she could feel a reaction without turning it into a definition of herself.

When she spoke with people, she didn’t feel herself trying to secure ground or avoid friction and when she did speak, it was because something needed saying rather than because silence felt uncomfortable. Other people’s certainty stopped coming off as a challenge and their disagreements stopped meaning that they had to become distant, which also meant that differences could stay. She didn’t need to try find a common agreement or change what she’d said into something acceptable. She noticed this mostly because certain habits dropped away and because the constant checking she used to do while talking and listening and even laughing was no longer running alongside everything else.

She had wanted to be a little more distant from Jess, but she realised just how much that was actually ego-driven. She wasn’t hurt by him. She was bruised. They hadn’t talked since before her weekend at Sosta’s — and that was something she would have to make right in her own time.