The humiliation of even saying it out loud made Fiona want to disappear into the kitchen floor.
"But I did." The words tumbled out before she could stop them. "Iamall those things. I am naive. I do say stupid stuff. I'm exactly as dumb as that account makes me sound."
"Stop it."
She imagined strangers scrolling through her life, laughing in their beds or at bus stops or during coffee breaks—snickering over her private thoughts while she was standing right there in the world, thinking she was loved.
The embarrassment curled hot and acidic in her belly. Her life had been background noise for someone else’s entertainment.
"It's true?—"
"Stop it right now." Emma moved around the counter, taking Fiona's face in her hands. "You are not dumb. You are not stupid. You are kind and trusting and you see magic in things other people miss. That's not a flaw, that's a gift."
Fiona's eyes filled with tears. "It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like a joke."
"Because he made it into one. Because he took the things that make you beautiful and turned them into content for assholes to consume." Emma's voice was fierce. "That's not on you. That's on him."
The reality was too much, too big—how completely, how devastatingly she had been fooled. She had spent two years believing she was in the safest place in the world, that Dean's arms were where her vulnerabilities could live without fear.
She had given him every tender, breakable part of herself—her silly fears, her earnest hopes, her moments of pure, unguarded joy—because she thought that's what marriage meant.
That's whatlovewas supposed to be. But that’s not what Fiona had had with Dean. She suddenly felt exhausted. Too tired of it all.
“I thought he loved me.”
"I know, honey." Emma's thumb brushed away a tear from Fiona's cheek.
She thought about all the times she’d spoken about Dean to her family—gushed about how attentive he was, how lucky she felt. She’d bragged about him. Showed them pictures, told stories. And all along, he’d been looking down on her. What did that make her? Gullible? Pathetic? Ajoke?
No. What did that makehim? A liar. A coward. A cruel bastard who'd made her trust into his entertainment.
From the living room came the sound of cheering—someone had scored a touchdown. Normal life continuing while Fiona's world felt like it was ending.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, and when she pulled them away, the hurt had crystallized into pure, clean anger.
"I can never forgive him for this,” she whispered.
It was late.
Emma and Milo had gone to bed an hour ago. The house was quiet, save for the hum of the fridge and the occasional creak of the old wood frame settling into night. Fiona sat cross-legged on the guest bed, her laptop warm against her thighs, a spiral notebook open beside her—half-covered in doodles and half in scribbled thoughts she hadn’t known she needed to write.
Something had been circling in her head since earlier—since that moment in the kitchen when Emma had looked her dead in the eyes and said:That’s not a flaw. That’s a gift.
It didn’t feel like a gift. It felt like something people laughed at. It felt like vulnerability that had been weaponized against her.
And yet… her kids didn’t think she was stupid.
They came to her every day with their tangled sentences and their uncertainty and confusion, and she had always, always made space for them. She never laughed at them. She showed them how to be gentle with themselves. How to reframe the ugly little voices in their heads that saidI’m dumborI’m annoyingorI mess everything up.
She had helped them rewrite those thoughts.
What if she did the same for herself?
Fiona opened the app and created a new account.
The username came easily, like it had been waiting in the back of her brain:
@missfionasays
