{"id":7819,"date":"2025-10-08T08:06:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T08:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/?p=7819"},"modified":"2025-10-08T08:06:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T08:06:28","slug":"a-birthday-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/?p=7819","title":{"rendered":"A Birthday Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6 class=\"sr-only\"><\/h6>\n<div class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:--spacing(4)] thread-sm:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(6)] thread-lg:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(16)] px-(--thread-content-margin)\">\n<div class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] thread-lg:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\" tabindex=\"-1\">\n<div class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col grow\">\n<div class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal [.text-message+&amp;]:mt-5\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"6896502d-afcd-4c07-8c05-f7768cdc4cd1\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden first:pt-[1px]\">\n<div class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words light markdown-new-styling\">\n<p data-start=\"23\" data-end=\"71\">My husband gave me shower gel for my birthday.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"73\" data-end=\"280\">We\u2019re not broke \u2014 far from it. His business is doing well, our bills are paid, and I\u2019d secretly hoped for something thoughtful. Flowers. A small piece of jewelry. Anything that said he remembered who I am.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"282\" data-end=\"443\">But the bottle he handed me was the one scent he <em data-start=\"331\" data-end=\"338\">knows<\/em> I hate. Cheap, sharp, artificial. I stared at it, trying to smile, feeling something inside me shrink.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"445\" data-end=\"630\">Later that night, when he was asleep, I stood over the sink, the light flickering, and unscrewed the cap. The smell hit me \u2014 cloying, fake sweetness \u2014 and I poured it down the toilet.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"632\" data-end=\"740\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\">It wasn\u2019t about the gift. It was about what it said:<br data-start=\"684\" data-end=\"687\" \/>that somewhere along the way, he\u2019d stopped seeing me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My husband gave me shower gel for my birthday. We\u2019re not broke \u2014 far from it. His business is doing well, our bills are paid, and I\u2019d secretly hoped for something thoughtful. Flowers. A small piece of jewelry. Anything that said he remembered who I am. But the bottle he handed me was the one &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7821,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7819\/revisions\/7821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildwondertube.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}