Imagine someone who has been lied to so many times that even the truth now feels suspicious. They check details they once would have ignored. They question explanations that should be easy to believe. At night, they replay old conversations, searching for the moment when something stopped making sense. During the day, they try to carry on as if nothing happened, while fighting a battle nobody else can see.
The hardest part is not always what was taken from them. It is what the deception leaves behind: the fear that trusting again will simply give someone another chance to hurt them.
