It seemed harmless.
Just small things.
But small things have a way of becoming big things when one person keeps doing them and the other person keeps expecting them.
Eventually, those little things began taking up a frightening amount of my life.
I would come home exhausted from work and still find myself cleaning before I could sit down.
Ryan would be on the couch watching television while I moved around the house.
He would laugh at something on his phone while I gathered his clothes from the floor.
Sometimes I’d look at him and think, Surely he sees how tired I am.
Surely he knows I’m doing all this.
But whenever I asked him to help, he always gave me the same smile.
“Megan, you do it better than I do.”
Sometimes he would even laugh.
“Besides, you know where everything goes.”
I laughed too.
I wish I hadn’t.
Because every time I laughed, I was teaching him that it was okay.
One evening, I finally said:
“Ryan, could you at least put things away after yourself?”
He didn’t even look up.
“You’ll do it.”
I stared at him.
“That’s not the point.”
He shrugged.
“You always end up doing it anyway.”
