My Husband Took It All in the Divorce – He Had No Idea What He Was Actually Getting…

“One room at a time. One color at a time. One day at a time.”

We painted her kitchen sage green. She cried when she saw it.

“Happy tears,” she said. “The color of new beginnings.”

About three months after the divorce was finalized, Vincent showed up at my apartment. I barely recognized him.

He’d lost weight, but not the healthy kind. There were dark circles under his eyes.

His suit was wrinkled, and his watch was gone. He looked like a man who’d been through a war and lost.

He stood in my doorway, and for a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“I didn’t know it was this bad,” he said, his voice low. “I made mistakes. I know that now. But I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

I leaned against my doorframe and looked at him, really looked at him. This man I’d loved for almost half my life.

This man who’d thrown me away like garbage. This man who was now drowning in the consequences of his own choices.

“Can we talk?” he asked. “Maybe we can figure something out. I could… I don’t know, maybe we could…”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence. He couldn’t bring himself to ask for what he actually wanted: help.

My help, after everything.

“You asked for everything except Tyler,” I said calmly. “You got exactly what you wanted.”

“Alexis, please…”

“Goodbye, Vincent.”

I closed the door. He stood in the hallway for 10 minutes.

I know because I watched through the peephole while eating ice cream. Best show I’d ever seen; five stars, would watch again.

That evening, after Tyler went to bed, I sat in my small living room and looked at my grandmother’s photo on the shelf. The recipe box was next to it, the one thing Lorraine had almost taken, the one thing that mattered most.

“You were right about everything, Grandma,” I said quietly. “Keep your own money, know your worth, and never let anyone make you feel small.”

The apartment was quiet. Small. Nothing like the house I’d lived in for 15 years.

But it was mine. Every paint color, every piece of furniture, every decision—mine.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I was free.