“I want to marry you,” she said one night as we lay wrapped in a sheet on the floor, having slid like salamanders off the bed.

I winced with fear and a fleeting disgust. A relationship with a woman meant failure: I had failed to get a man, failed to find something normal, failed to not be pathetic. “This is why you don’t have a boyfriend!” my mother yelled each time I did anything she deemed wrong, even if it had no relation whatsoever to what I’d done or why I didn’t have a boyfriend, even when I did have one. I’d spill juice on the kitchen floor and that was why no man would ever love me. I’d forget to get a pedicure on the first day of spring and it was the reason I would never get married.

“Marry me, then,” I said to Kate.

“I love the scars on your feet,” she said. She kissed the top of my foot—I had kissed the bottom of hers a number of times. “I love these scars.” She placed her lips beneath my hipbone, tracing a thin scar that my mother had laid with a high heel’s spike. “I want to protect you forever.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I want you to.”

Two years into our relationship, when I sensed that Kate was beginning to drift, I stopped eating. I’d try to initiate sex and she would swiftly turn it into a cuddling session. She’d come home later and later without explanation. If I asked, she’d say she was at her studio on campus. But what fashion student needed to pull all-nighters? The more she pulled away, the less food I consumed. Maybe starving myself was an act of passive resistance, a way of regaining the control I had surrendered to her and refused to take back, which would’ve been the healthier option. Instead, I chose to leverage her guilt.

Our relationship began its full descent over a winter break spent in the South of France. We had dinner at a seafood place in Antibes one evening. When my fish arrived, the garçon unveiled it, and Kate practically clapped with excitement. “Look!” she said. “It’s so nutritious! Citrus fruits and julienned vegetables. And it’s all grilled! Isn’t that good? Something you can finally eat!”

I smiled as my eyes filled with tears. One escaped onto my tilapia. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“Please don’t cry.” Her voice turned bitter as she shook her head. “Please don’t fucking cry. Please stop fucking crying!” She slammed her palm on the table, wine leaped from her glass.

I sniffled and snorted and tried to suck back snot and tears, which only made me cry harder. I’m aware I can be exhausting—“you exist too much,” my mother often told me.