There was no doubt about it: I was in the midst of the biggest, baddest failure of my life. I guess, in retrospect, there had been signs, a few rumors. Being from North Carolina, I should have known that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But Thad laughed the rumors away.

I knew when I walked out of the apartment that this wouldn’t be a normal divorce. If Thad had left me for another woman, people would rally around me, curse him for how he had betrayed me. But now that he was leaving me for a man?

Well, of course my girlfriends would hate him. They didn’t have a choice. But strangers, and acquaintances, and society? They would all cut him slack. He was finally living his truth. There would be pity for me, of course. And maybe even whispers that our marriage had been for appearances.

I exchanged pleasantries with the women I knew, forcing a smile, getting close enough to smell their Jo Malone perfume and see the diamonds sparkling in their ears, hoping that they couldn’t see how I was dying inside.

As I sat down in one of the chic leather chairs, I couldn’t help but realize how different this was from the waiting rooms of my youth with their standard-issue medical office chairs with the upholstery that itched the backs of my legs. This waiting room smelled of soothing essential oils, not antiseptic.

As I picked up the latest issue of Clematis—as though I couldn’t have practically recited its contents—all I could think about was that I should have stayed in Raleigh. If I had continued on at the little newspaper outside of town I interned at for two summers in college, if I had taken the job they offered me, my entire life could have been different.

I’d loved working for that little newspaper; I had loved getting to do absolutely everything, from writing to editing, proofreading to graphic design. I had even learned to take a decent photo or two. Those summers made me the journalist I am today. I wasn’t a one-trick pony. I knew every element of putting out a publication.

But when I saw the salary package they could offer, I realized that even I, a single girl in a small town, couldn’t live on it. And, to be honest, I felt a little bit ashamed. I had been number one in my journalism school class, the editor of my college magazine. By all accounts, I was destined for journalistic greatness. I couldn’t work at a small-town newspaper for the rest of my life.

Even still, I actually didn’t expect to get the job at Clematis. It was a smaller, core group of journalists. And if it didn’t work out, I was stuck in Palm Beach—which, admittedly, isn’t a bad place to be stuck—with no New York City publication on my résumé. If I’m honest with myself, I was scared. When I was in college, I said I stayed in Raleigh so that I could be close to the beach, drive home on the weekends to soak up the summer rays. And I guess that was true, in some ways. But when you got right down to it, I was terrified of being in a big city, scared to leave home, intimidated by the great, wide world beyond the South.