I’ll never forget the moment I realized my marriage of eight years was over, and honestly, I really couldn’t understand how I didn’t figure that out sooner.

I was lying in the ER with a dislocated shoulder while every breath I took felt like fire

I told Tyler, my husband, that I had been in an accident and asked him to come, but he wrote back that he couldn’t because he was in a middle of his lunch with Charlotte.

I just typed one word: “Okay.”

That was it. That word ended eight years of marriage, even if he didn’t know it yet.

It’s crazy to think that just that morning, I was in the kitchen making him breakfast the way he liked it, eggs over easy, bacon just shy of burnt, toast with the thinnest layer of butter.

That morning, he had mentioned Charlotte again, with that little smile of his he used to save for me.

“Another crisis,” he said, referring to his old friend’s Charlotte’s ex-husband who had allegedly stalked her. But honestly, it was rather strange that his stalking only happened on Thursdays, and it was even stranger that after months of him doing that police never got involved.

When I met Charlotte for the first time, I somehow knew she couldn’t be just a friend. They way she and Tyler laughed, how she placed her hand on his shoulder, and a bunch of other subtle signs that there was more to their story of being old friends.

That night, as I was driving to dinner with friends without Tyler, I was making a bunch of excuses in my head for his absence. And just then, I spotted a truck driving my way.

The next thing I knew was that I was on the ground, with blood all over me.

At the hospital, they tried to reach him three times. When he finally answered, I could hear the nurse saying, “Mr. Davis, your wife Hannah… serious accident… stable, but…” Then her face shifted. “He says… he’s with a friend in crisis, he can’t leave. He asked me to tell you to text.”

Then, I had the nurse call a police officer I knew, Janet, to go find him. I pictured the scene perfectly: him with Charlotte, leaning in close, until the officers walked up to the table and told him his wife was lying in the ER. That humiliation was just the beginning.

When my brother, David, arrived at the hospital, he was furious. He knew this wasn’t the first time Tyler showed he didn’t care about me. And without consulting me, David called a locksmith and a moving company, arranging for the locks to be changed and Tyler’s things to be boxed and out of my apartment.

Hearing him doing that, I didn’t stop him.

By the next morning, the locks were changed and movers cleared his things. A neighbor mentioned seeing Charlotte’s BMW at my house. It was enough proof that it hadn’t been just lunches. When Tyler came with his mother to collect his boxes, Charlotte was still calling. She was always the priority.

He left in minutes, and I stopped looking back. His excuses and barroom stories weren’t mine to carry. Six months later, my home was full of laughter, my scars had softened, and Thursdays felt light again. The crash almost ended me, but in truth, it gave me back my life.