My legs ached, and some days my daughter started crying halfway through. I’d hurry home feeling like I’d failed at something embarrassingly simple.
But every morning, I went out again.
After a few weeks, I added short workouts while she napped—squats beside the couch, exercises on the living-room rug, anything I could stop the moment she woke.
I also started paying more attention to what I ate. I wasn’t starving myself. I simply planned meals instead of surviving on crackers and whatever Ryan had left in the refrigerator.
Progress came painfully slowly.
Sometimes I lost two pounds in a week. Other times, the scale showed the same number for three straight weeks.
Ryan always seemed interested.
“How much now?” he asked one Saturday as I came out of the bathroom.
“Eleven pounds.”
He smiled. “See? Wasn’t so hard.”
Another week, when I told him nothing had changed, he only said, “Huh,” and returned to his phone.
I hated how much that tiny reaction bothered me.
Still, I kept going.
Around the same time, Ryan started coming home later.
“Work’s crazy,” he told me.
I believed him. He had always been ambitious, and between the baby and my new routine, I barely questioned it.
But I started noticing things.
His phone spent most evenings face down on the table.
Once during dinner, it buzzed. Ryan glanced at the screen, immediately stood, and walked into the hallway.
“Work?” I asked when he returned.
“Yeah. Nothing important.”
I accepted the answer because I wanted to.
Meanwhile, my body slowly changed.
At that point, I still believed that if I became the woman Ryan wanted again, our marriage would somehow return to normal.
My walks grew longer. Carrying my daughter upstairs no longer left me breathless. One morning, I caught my reflection in a shop window as I pushed the stroller.
I stopped.
For the first time in months, I liked the woman looking back at me.
Strangely, Ryan wasn’t the first person I wanted to tell.
By the time his company party arrived, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to dress for something besides groceries or a pediatrician appointment.
I chose a fitted dark green dress I’d bought a few weeks earlier—not because Ryan liked the color or because it made me look thinner.
Because I liked it.
