Sometimes I hate him so much I could... scream until my lungs are raw and my throat bleeds. I want to take every plate in this house and smash it against the wall, not in a fit of rage, but with the cold, deliberate precision of a surgeon. I want to erase him. I want to delete every photo, every memory, every trace of his existence from my life until the space he occupied is just a hollow, echoing void.

But I don't. I just sit here, clenching my jaw so hard my teeth ache, and picture it. I picture the look on his face if I told him the truth—that his simple, earnest affection feels like sandpaper on my soul. That the sound of his chewing makes me want to claw my own ears off. That his very presence in the bed beside me is a suffocating weight I can no longer bear. The hatred is a physical thing, a hot, coiled serpent in my gut, and it's getting harder to keep it from striking.