I don’t fully forget, though. I don’t think I’m supposed to.
Eleven years taught me something worth keeping, even after the anger faded into something calmer.
Respect, once lost inside a house, doesn’t rebuild itself through apology alone. It rebuilds through small, repeated proof, one knock at a time, one coaster under one coffee mug. One quiet Sunday after another where nothing gets left behind for somebody else to clean.
I think about that lesson often, applying it well beyond just Deloris and our house. Trust, once broken, rarely returns through a single grand gesture. It returns the slow, unglamorous way, through a hundred small choices that either honor the boundary or quietly ignore it. Week after week, until a pattern finally proves itself one way or the other.
I’ve watched that principle apply to more than just Deloris, honestly, in the years since. Friendships I’ve repaired, work relationships I’ve rebuilt after conflict. Even the way Caleb and I communicate now after everything this whole ordeal forced us to finally say out loud to each other. Big apologies feel good in the moment. Small, repeated proof is what actually changes anything long term.
I finally have that proof now, gathering slowly, week after week. In a house that’s fully, legally, undeniably mine.
