I can’t change your mind, I’m just singing this song.
I knew it was doomed when I had to back up and pull all evidence of my presence from her house. Why? Um, not clear on it. Each time we’d try to discuss it would result in bloodshed. She admitted at some point that one of her bad marriages had a lot of make-up sex. “I don’t do makeup sex,” I told her. “We can find the heat and energy without fighting.”
Well, that was my idea. That’s exactly the opposite of how things broke.
A minor disturbance would happen, and her flight mode or fight mode would kick in. Most common was the freeze. Language would default to some pre-recorded messages. “Why don’t you just stop?” and “Why are you doing this?”
“What are you doing?” I asked in the final boss battle in her bedroom last Sunday.
[I am three days sober.]
“No,” she said, “You don’t get to make this about me.”
“What? I’m asking what’s your part in this ‘fight’ over Instagram?”
“This isn’t about Instagram.”
“Okay.”
“It’s about your anger and rage. You create drama for no reason.”
“I am writing and reading in your bed. Making sure you didn’t feel I was leaving.”
“Oh great!” she said with a sigh. “You’re trapped in my house, now.”
I wanted to nod. I stayed stonefaced.
“If you can’t talk about stuff and just need to be alone…”
“I’m ready to talk about anything.”
“No, you are angry now. You can’t hear anything I’m saying.”
“Right.”
“Why that face?”
“What? My face?” I put my hand over my eyes. “I don’t know how to present myself or speak when you’re upset.”
“You’re the one who’s triggered.”
She loves to use the language of attachment, having only imagined it and not experienced it in 30-years of marriage to two different difficult men. According to her, both relationships failed because of the other person. She continued to complain to friends, “He left me,” when the marriage had been toxic and abusive for years. Years. And she was left?
I wanted to ask, “Were you doing anything to push him to be better, different?”
“He joined a men’s group.”
“And you?”
“I got a therapist to talk too.”
“But something still didn’t work out.”
“His men’s group started telling him he needed to get out.”
(Curtain: no first-hand information beyond this point.)
“So other than that, and him leaving, you had a great marriage?”
She had wound herself into a fork: either she admitted the marriage was awful and she did her part in the collapse, or she was blindsided in a lovely marriage, a guy who left her.
This is a smart woman. Maybe less worldly than she’d like to have you imagine. Lovely. She is lovely. Pierced my entire soul with energy and warmth. Each minor frustration blew into a fight, somehow. And it was 100% me who instigated the fight (my insecurities) and then got triggered (by my past traumas) and became unreachable. It’s as if her self-diagnosis was being tried out on me.
I do not cultivate drama. I will stand in for a survivor of sexual abuse, but I will not become their punching bag. I learned that during my first marriage. Sexual abuse recovered memories that blasted us out of intimacy and into the “Partners of Survivors” and “Survivors” support groups. See, marrying me, gave her the financial resouces to actually seek a quality therapist, not just a PA prescribing Prozac, escalating to Lexapro, if more leverage is needed.
“Maybe you thrive on drama?”
It was her last text. She is now blocked. My addiction bloomed, was recognized, indulged, and then limited. No good feeling, no peak experience, no “high” is worth compromising your integrity or your health. I knew I would continue to respond to her “ping.” Like a bell, the fix was only a ding, ping, or phone call away. No more.
I did have to stop by one last time to pick up my watch that was charging on her nightstand.
She came to the door freshly showered and looking great. Smelling even better. “I’m not mad,” she offered. No motion toward hands or hearts.
“That’s good.”
I took the watch and a random pair of reading glasses without touching her hand. “Thank you.”
I will look back with fondness at the woman who lit me on fire in a newer deeper way than exploded at a certain depth. The freediving was over. I was out of air and heading for the surface. Time to find a new shore on the horizon and begin swimming. Or tread lightly here. Pause in this moment of peace.
The wolves are at my door. All bills are due. All phone calls are banks and credit card companies.
Priority 1: survival
Priority 2: expand creatively
Priority 3: seek alternative cash flow (job offers keep coming and then being delayed)
As I agreed with my best friend, “No band, no relationship, until the cash is secured.”
I’m ducking the phone calls. Not asking friends or family for a bridge loan. I’m pushing on the system. The IRS owes me 2,000 for 2024 and $600 for 2025. Whole Foods Market’s unemployment bullshit will end up paying me $5000 before my benefits are exhausted. In eight months, I can begin receiving around $2000 of Social Security. So, I’m getting close to achieving minor escape velocity, perhaps not for the moon yet, but orbital angles look promising.
And again, I find myself at a loss. Simultaneously at a high point. I know the writing soothes me in the moment, I now am seeing how it anchors me against any storm. I have my strong drive to survive, to thrive even. It’s part of what keeps me seeking my fit partner, rather than settling for a semi-fit partner, or a beautiful but glitching partner.
I do see trauma recovery as a needed journey in my life. That was processed and folded into place. I wouldn’t say I’m trauma-free, but my skeletons (both metaphorically and physically) are ghost-free. If the past is causing you undue pain in the present, go find your therapist, guru, or Ayahuasca adventure to Brazil. Set yourself free.
I am not the way. I offer no comfort or hope for my lost partner. I wish her well. I clip the thread. I write.
I am sorry. She was wonderful. My experience, strength, and hope were not enough to pull us to a calm eddy of the ocean of life. We needed life rafts. We needed chocolate-covered almonds in bulk. And we needed to stay connected physically to keep her fluttering, hummingbird-of-a-heart from exploding into sparks of pain and loss.
I am not pain and loss.
Now, I suppose, I add to the loss she was already deeply avoiding. She’s accepting the death of a dream about a marriage that I only hear about in distressing examples, which is hard, even if the guy was doing shitty things.
Misunderstandings and minor frustrations are not shitty things. If each time I leave you feel I am leaving you forever (Um) I think you can see how that’s not about me and us. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks. The sorrow of loss is about your life, the time you spent with someone who didn’t appreciate you as I did. I do.
In such an instant of time, we met, fell in love, and hugged our way into the days and storms ahead. I could’ve, should’ve, given myself a timeout when she told me her divorce was not final. I think her spiritual vibe connected and shook me awake at our first hug, our initial encounter.
She stood up, the other two people at the table were dear friends. I hugged my friends with joy and laughter. When it came to her, she stepped in and gave me a royal hug. “Wow,” I said. “I guess we’re huggers. Thank you.”
It was as if she planted a tracking device on my chest, beneath where my gal bladder was removed ten years ago. The tether is hard to break. No contact is the only way I know to soothe the addiction, keep walking past the bar or the text/phone offers from her. It was time to black out. Cut the tie.
I am sad. Quiet.
I feel the loss of someone very special, fit, and smashingly good-looking. I wondered about her last night. Two long unhappy marriages. Her entire adult life. Now, she’s getting the feel of being alone. (Before I arrived.)
“I haven’t really spent much time alone. I need that, I think.”
“Yes, it’s a good idea. Define your goals.”
“I never really had to think about the kind of person I wanted to be in a relationship with. I never went looking for someone. I don’t know what dating looks like.”
She is going to find out.
The final flutter of the butterfly after the connection was being severed and contact failing.
“Will you send me those cute photos you took of me on our walk?”
[Block Contact]
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© 2026 john oakley mcelhenney, all rights reserved
dig into the deeper meaning with the Cloud Pilots
> back to index: proofs of life
Look >> There’s a new Facebook Group on *hyperfiction*
© 2026 john oakley mcelhenney, all rights reserved
