The Vitamin Deficiency

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter like a catcher waiting for the perfect pitch. Elaine stared at them while chewing spinach from a plastic container—raw, bitter, exactly what she deserved. She'd become a woman who ate spinach for breakfast at 6 AM before her shift at the pharmacy, counting out vitamin supplements for people who'd never learned to take care of themselves.

She'd met David at a baseball game three years ago. He'd bought her an orange soda that stained her mouth like a warning. They'd spent that summer talking about everything except what mattered: that David was still in love with his ex-wife, that Elaine was terrified of being alone, that chemistry doesn't equal compatibility.

Now he was gone, moved out last week while she worked the late shift. The apartment felt cavernous without his snoring, his scattered socks, his bear-like presence taking up space on their sagging couch. She'd told herself she was a vitamin to his system—essential, completing him. Truth was, she was just a supplement he took out of habit, then quit when he remembered he never believed in them anyway.

Elaine's phone buzzed. Her sister: "You coming to Mom's birthday?"

The weight in her chest felt like grief, but what was she grieving? David had been emotionally absent for months. Their conversations had become as sparse as the outfield in September—long stretches of nothing punctuated by the occasional desperate swing and miss.

She spit the spinach into the trash. Outside, an orange sunrise bled through the window, beautiful and indifferent. Elaine realized she wasn't mourning David. She was mourning the version of herself who'd believed love was something you could earn by being useful, by showing up, by standing in the batter's box waiting for a pitch that might never come.

The papers remained unsigned. Elaine made coffee instead, watching steam rise and dissipate, learning for the first time in her life how to exist in her own empty space.