Written in 2022:

This started their jealousy and anger towards how much I enjoyed writing with a friend. Their resentment built and built and built until controlling the writing and trying to be cruel about the writing ended up being the outlet that they chose, when really they resented me for having my attention on other things. It really felt like this all the time. I would tell my ex-wife, “Writing makes me happy. You made it clear that you don’t want me to write anymore, but I will continue to write. I will not let you stop me.”

“I’m not asking you to stop writing.”

She asked me to write only at specified times, in sequence, got upset at how much I wrote on my own, got angry when I asked what they thought of my work, got pissed when she happened to catch something I wrote on someone else’s phone. She got mad at the content, the frequency, the fact that I didn’t make enough things for her when she did not want to write for herself…