After I left my husband and moved into my own apartment, I had a lot of time for navel-gazing. In my first few months alone, with only copious amounts of take-out pizza and twizzlers to keep me company — I had time to do a lot of thinking about the fact that for WAY too long, I’d been WAY too nice. Played WAY too fair. Given away WAY too much with WAY too little coming back in return.

As my waistline grew bigger and my mood got moodier, I decided to change my nice-girl ways and become a bitch with a capital B. I’d come across a refrigerator magnet that perfectly captured my definition of the kind of bitch I wanted to be …

My definition of a real bitch!

And, okay, I know you’re going to start laughing, but to encourage the bitchier side of me, I actually created bitch “buttons” — little round cut-outs from old manila folders that were colored and labeled with the word BITCH! Each time I stood up for myself with a friend, a boss, a stranger on the street, or to the drones at the courthouse where I was representing myself in my divorce, I got a Bitch Button!

I know it sounds goofy, but in those shaky, slightly scary days of hauling my personal life through a court system, dealing with the emotional detritus of a marriage gone south, and trying to get back on my feet again as a solo player, those buttons actually made a difference as I saw them start to accumulate on the bedroom wall where I faithfully taped them up each night.

Small things, little things, maybe to some. But I was slowly developing a muscle that had gone unused most of my life — the muscle that says “I’d rather be alone and broke than with a boss or husband or friend or family member or even a stray cat that treats me poorly.”

I’m sure I overcompensated for awhile with my bitchy ways, but believe me, I had a lot to learn about being a bitch (though I’m sure some people in my past might beg to differ).

Anyway, when I left Boston and moved to Florida, I tossed the Bitch Buttons. I was a new woman — hear me roar, and all that.

I started my own business so I wouldn’t have to answer to any egomaniac of a boss. I let friends fall by the wayside in my pursuit of having drama-free relationships. And I’ve gone through years of Saturday nights alone because I won’t accept any man who thinks sex is the required way for a woman to say thank you for a steak dinner.

Now, I think I’ve come to the bitch-alicious point where I truly can take or leave anyone or any situation, at any time — if they or it threaten my inner sanctum of being a babe in total control of herself.

It’s like that movie, Heat, with Pacino and DeNiro — where DeNiro’s character, a criminal, says “Do not have anything in your life you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.”

As harsh as that might sound, I think it’s the right way to live — except I modify the statement to be this: “Do not have any person — any client, any lover, any friend — in your life you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if they take a mean-spirited swing at your heart.”

Someone who’s mean? Kick ’em to the curb and move on.

And if that’s being a bitch, then, please, by all means, give me another button.