“We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Despite our promise to his sister that we would not fight anymore and we would be good, it didn’t last for very long. I still slept in the other room and stayed away from him as much as possible. I still kept the house clean, did the yard work and mowed the lawn– up until the point where I accidentally broke the lawn mower because I mowed over a row of rocks in the garden, which Shane had previously told me I could do with the thing. He blamed me for breaking his lawn mower though, and once again it was my fault that things weren’t getting done in the house.

Though the summer memories from the vacation when he sister was up in New York felt like rocks to hold onto in the ocean of life right then, Shane’s moods were just all over the place. He would tell me that maybe we should get back together and how he wanted to propose to me again, while telling me that I should move with him to Florida because he already promised his sister and nephews that he would move down there to be near them. Then he would get pissed that I wasn’t obediently following along with the plan. Then when I said I was confused and didn’t want to kiss him when he tried to get some attention, even though we were broken up he acted like I was withholding something from him that was rightfully his to take whenever he wanted.

After his family visited, Shane decided he would quit his job and work on the things at the house so he could sell it. He didn’t want to do the house work on the weekends or nights after working all day so he just quit his job. Absolutely no money coming in which made him crankier. Then for the first two weeks of being home, he didn’t do much work on the house. Instead, he played with his Wii and watched television and movies for hours on end.

I started going to an anonymous support group for people who came from alcoholic backgrounds, trying to make myself as strong as possible in order to leave or deal with living in the situation, whichever I ended up doing. I would walk many miles just to get to those meetings, in order to acquire strength from the support group through osmosis.

There was an old lady, who upon hearing that I had walked four miles that particular day to get to the meeting, told me that she would drive me home. I thanked her profusely as we chatted during the car ride home. I had shared some of my story about where I was living with the group during our meeting, and she seemed keen to try to get me out of the situation.

“Are you sure you want me to drop you back home?” She asked. “I could let you sleep on my couch for a few days. Or maybe a shelter. Do you have any friends in the area?”

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay. Thanks, though.” I shook my head. It wasn’t things that I hadn’t thought about before. I was done running though. I don’t know what made me so stubborn then. August came and even though we had both previously agreed that I would leave in July, I thought that maybe the fact that I was still living there would be a good hook to work things out between us. If I could just hold out a little while longer, maybe his depression would fade and the real Shane could come out and talk to me rationally.

One particular afternoon, he was starting to get angry and I could tell another fight was coming. He was mad about something at work again so knowing I couldn’t help him with any of the issues he was dealing with I went to go hide out in the basement before things got really out of hand.

I heard him storm into the downstairs living room, where our tenant was sitting watching television. After he berated her about how everyone in the house was so lazy, he asked her if she knew where I had gone. I heard her tell him I was in the basement hiding and that was all he needed to know. He stormed down the stairs while I went into the back room, trying to hide from the outburst that was coming– somehow, I knew, he would claim I started the whole thing.

I don’t think he even said anything to me when he saw me standing in the corner of the back room. He just punched the door to the back room a few times, angrily getting out his frustration while I jumped in my skin. Then he picked up a screwdriver and glared at me. I figured this was it– this was when I died at his hands. I saw my life flash in front of my eyes and backed up even further into the corner.

Then, he started stabbing the door with all his might with the screwdriver. I couldn’t even cry, though I wanted to. I was so scared to move, I couldn’t breath, so scared to do anything but back up into the corner. Maybe if I pretended I wasn’t there, he somehow wouldn’t see me or forget that I was there. Maybe if I prayed silently, the universe might save me from what I thought was coming next. I didn’t know if he was going to turn on me after he was done with the door. He must have stabbed it two dozen times, over and over and over again while I just huddled in the corner watching him.

“You fucking cunt! You goddamn fucking cunt! You selfish bitch!” He started screaming but after a while, his energy was gone and he dropped the screwdriver. He walked upstairs, muttering something about how I was worthless to him. I fell to my knees and cried. I was safe for now, but not forever. There was something I saw in him that day that was absolutely terrifying.

He would always claim that I called him a monster and I thought he was evil, which even then I did not. Still, there was a darkness in his soul that I couldn’t heal and that frightened me so badly.

After a few moments, I gathered my breath and dared to walk upstairs. I saw our tenant on the couch, completely oblivious to what she had caused. She always had a crush on Shane and I could just bet she wanted something to happen to me. I screamed at her, “Don’t you ever tell Shane where I am if I’m hiding again! He could have killed me! Are you a complete idiot?”

“I’m not getting involved.” She said with a shrug. No one cared. I could end up dead and no one would care or know– Shane even said he knew places where he could hide bodies. At the time, he said it so he could prove he could protect me but I knew he could borrow those skills at any time.

He would use Lisa to get back at me too. Whenever I needed space to work out where I felt my life was heading, or tried working out the finer details of moving out, Shane would ask Lisa out to dinner or the bowling alley. In return, she would agree with him on everything. If he said I was a psychopath, she would nod and smile. If he said that I was the devil, she would vehemently plead his case for him.

It was the only time he ever did anything with her and the only time when he wasn’t actively talking behind her back. He made sure I knew all about their adventures without me, telling me in detail how Lisa and him had so much fun without me. I just rolled my eyes whenever he tried to goad me like that.

It didn’t keep him from eventually throwing Lisa out though. One day he just came home and decided to tell her that she needed to pack her things and go. He said it was so that he could sell his house easier, but he didn’t seem to understand that selling a house, especially on Long Island, wasn’t an overnight kind of thing. If he wanted me to stay, like he said at times, we definitely could have used the money.

He had a habit of shooting himself in the foot though. He always demanded to be the owner, and therefore dictator, of the house so his word was law. That’s part of the reason I couldn’t see working things out with him– he wanted instant gratification not long term happiness. He would think in terms of only what he wanted and not what was best for us.

When Lisa finally left the house and packed the last of her belongings into the taxi cab, I watched her from the tiny window in my upstairs room and my heart sank. The last time Lisa lived with him, they got into another fight and she had nowhere to go but a shelter. At least this time she was able to find another apartment. Shane had managed to chase another person away.

Moreover, I knew that the only person left in the house with him on a daily basis was me. He was started to keep away from parties, staying away from close friends and there I was, the only person he could now take his anger out on. I wouldn’t even have Lisa to distract his fury every once in a while. I was trapped, alone with someone who I feared was losing it.

“She’s so lucky to have gotten out,” I thought as I watched her leave. Then I caught myself and realized how messed up it was that I was trying to make things right with someone who people were lucky to have gotten away from. Then I heard Shane slam the front door, finally happy that she was gone and my thoughts changed rapidly to, “oh god, I’m still here.”

I continued working on the house, trying to keep it afloat. I worked on selling things like Shane wanted on Craigslist so we could have some money to off-set the deficit left in Lisa’s wake. I managed to convince him to come to my support group– maybe if he came with me and listened to what they were saying there, maybe he would get something out of it.

The day we went to the support group, he ended up having to run a bunch of errands which exhausted him by the time he came home that afternoon. I was pretty tired too. I had mowed the lawn that day, cleaned up the house for several hours, did his laundry and cooked him dinner even though we weren’t together anymore.

When he came back to the house, I was supposed to have finished selling a bed on Craigslist as well, but the people had decided to stop by at eight o’clock at night instead, which I thought would be okay but which pissed Shane off entirely because he just wanted to sleep.

Nevertheless, he accompanied me to the support group that night. The group was talking about character defects and talking about what it meant to admit to ourselves and others what our shortcomings were in our lives. For some reasons, I started talking a lot, in more depth than I usually could with Shane. I talked all about how I had messed up some friendships in the past and how I wanted to try to get through my depression and anxiety and work to better those past friendships, if they could be saved at all.

When it was Shane’s turn to say something in group, he chose to pass. He seemed to at least be pay attention to everyone else in the group, especially me. That was all I asked of him– just to accompany me and see what it was like to be a child of an alcoholic, to see what it was like from my point of view with all the baggage that went with it. If he did want to stay with me, as he told me he did every other day, I needed to show him my truth.

Though, when we got home he was pissed off for some reason. He didn’t say a word coming home. Then when the people from Craigslist were late, he started yelling at me that I was keeping him awake by trying to sell stuff in the house like he had asked. I finally decided to go downstairs and get the furniture ready for pick up. I also realized, a bit too late since it was hours later, that I had forgotten his laundry in the washing machine all day.

Shane followed me down the stairs, grabbing my shirt while I was walking down to the basement. He was pissed off that I could be so careless to forget to finish my chores. And, to be honest, he was pissed off at the universe and everything that had ever gone wrong since the beginning of time was my fault, I just apparently didn’t realize it so he was going to drum it into my head until I understood.

He screamed at me, “You wasted my fucking time tonight! You want me to share? You want to hear what I fucking think of you, you goddamn bitch? Let’s see, I think you’re selfish, I think you’re a bitch, I think you’re useless, I think you left my clothes in the washing machine to get moldy on purpose, I think you are wasting my time.”

I didn’t tell him that one of the tenets of my support group was that we took our own character inventories, not other people’s inventories. I only wanted him to see what it was like to be me, and he was throwing it back in my face. I yanked back on my shirt, but then I realized that I was going to fall down the stairs onto the cold, hard cement if I pulled too hard.

I still went to go get his laundry out of the washing machine, as he stood over me screaming that I had ruined his clothes because I had left them in there since noon that afternoon. His logic needed work, since the clothes had only been wet nine hours, but that didn’t matter.

I let him berate me, until the doorbell rang and the people were there to get the bed. He went to sleep angry that night, like most nights. I had failed to fulfill whatever promise he thought I had made months ago and the screaming seemed like it would never end.

He had already taken my engagement ring back a month ago, but it got lost because he hid it so well. He somehow thought I was going to go through his things and take stuff, despite the fact that I never took anything belonging to him before. He thought it of me though, so it must be true. I was finding out a lot about me that was supposedly true those days. He thought it and it was so.

When he saw me around the house, he claimed that I had taken the ring. He angrily confronted me, “Where did you put it?”

“Put what?”

“The ring. You gave it back to me, so it’s mine. I don’t want you to have it anymore so where is it? Did you steal it? Are you going to sell it?”

I looked at him like he had two heads. Under no circumstances was I going to sell my engagement ring, especially after he had taken it back. We looked for it together for several hours, tearing the house apart as he tore my character apart. I was apparently a thief who was disloyal and untrustworthy. Yet, I hadn’t taken a thing.

When he started in on my character again, I finally broke down in tears. “Shane, I swear to god! I swear on my mother and father’s graves, I didn’t take the ring! I don’t know where it is. I’m really sorry that it’s lost, but I didn’t take it, I swear! On my mother and father’s graves, for god sake, I swear!”

He starred at me and then just let it go. I found out a few days later that he had found it about a half hour into our search and he said he was sorry he made me swear on my parent’s graves, but he still didn’t apologize for calling me names or telling me I was a thief. I was an evil person in his eyes, capable of anything.

Somehow I still loved him through all of this– so, when he asked me to accompany him to go help paint his friend’s new house, I was happy to help out. It would give us a chance to get out of the house, see some friends and maybe rekindle what we were quickly losing.

After help paint his friend’s house for a few hours, we finally left– but not before Shane turned to me and suggested we go over to Montauk Point. “It’s only an hour away! Let’s go on an adventure, Julie!”

I loved the way his eyes lit up when he wanted to do something spontaneous, so I couldn’t possibly say no. We ate lunch at a small little restaurant and then drove the rest of the way out to the farthest point on Long Island. We climbed on the rocks out there, saw the lighthouse, talked about what we both wanted out of life– he still wanted to move to Florida and I told him I wanted him to do what made him happy but I didn’t want to move down there.

I sang ‘Sittin’ on The Dock of the Bay’ by Otis Redding while looking at the water. I had been singing that song for weeks now, it seemed to be stuck in my head for some reason. The wind whipped at my hair and I crooned out, “Cuz I’ve had nothing to live for and look like nothing’s gonna come my way, so, I’m just gon’ sit on the dock of the bay watchin’ the tide roll away.”

He laughed. “You look like you’re in a music video.”

It was a beautiful day, one of our last.

When we got back to the car, Shane noticed that there was a parking ticket on it. The lot was free after 5:00 but he’d parked there at 4:45, and some stupid cop had come through during those fifteen minutes and cost him over two hundred dollars. He was pissed as we got into the car.

Suddenly, the happy mood from the beach was gone. He fumed as he got on the one-lane highway heading home. Since it was a nice sunny day, everyone using the same one-lane highway from Montauk was caught in a ridiculous amount of traffic, which Shane was also pissed off about. He started talking about how he wanted to get off Long Island, how the cops here were all out to get him, how his friends all were disloyal morons and then he started in on me.

“Do you want me to drive?” I asked, as he weaved around people on the shoulder of the road.

“No. You never do anything for me, why should you start now? I don’t know what I’m still doing with you!” He yelled at me, making me feel guilty for my sheer existence. “How could I have deluded myself so much to think of ever dating you? Why didn’t I just listen to everyone who told me to stay away from you because you were poison? I shouldn’t be here! I should be with my sister! My sister loves me and you– you’re just using me. You’ve been using me for years now. Fucking bitch just using me for all these fucking years! I was a fool to ever trust you! You don’t care that I got a ticket, you’d be happy if I was in jail! I should have never gotten back with you–”

I don’t recall every word he flung at me or all the wrongs he blamed on me. I was too busy trying to flee my body. I had heard of people who dissociated when they were raped and somehow it kept them safe. Maybe that would work with me if I could just make myself small enough to not exist anymore, to shrink down in my mind to hide from the verbal abuse he was flinging my way. He hated me and now I was trapped, in never-ending traffic, forced to listen as he berated me for everything.

I starred at the sky, watching the trees pass as my head lolled over to the window. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to be on Earth anymore. If I could have flown from my body, to leave it behind just to disappear forever, I would have.

Suddenly, he took a deep breath and pulled into a gas station. He got out of the car and walked into their store as I came back to myself. I took a breath and tried to figure out what was going on. I needed air, so I got out of the car and walked to the picnic bench at the gas station.

He came out of the gas station store, bringing me my favorite soda. I took it from him, not entirely sure what was going on or what I should do. Then he sat down beside me and finally said in a calm voice, “I’m so sorry I lost my cool, Julie. I don’t know what gets into me that makes me so angry. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll never do that to you again. I’m just a dummy. I love you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

I smirked. “Maybe I should drive home?”

“Please!” He said, handing me the keys.

I breathed in relief. I hated being in the car with him when he had moments of road rage. We talked calmly on the way home, but things were starting to really worry me. He had screamed at me before, but I’d never been trapped with him for over an hour listening to him berate me for so long. I messaged Charity on Facebook and asked if she knew if anyone down in Virginia had an extra room for me. She replied that Hope had an extra room and asked if I was okay, but I never responded. Things got a little better after Shane made his promise to me, I thought maybe he would keep it this time. I didn’t know what to tell my friend but I decided it could just wait and I didn’t have to make any decisions if I just let the conversation drop.

The Saturday before Labor Day, Shane got a call from his friend inviting him to come out to Pennsylvania for a short vacation. I was glad because I knew he could really use a break from Long Island. He asked me to come with him, but I thought we also needed a short break from each other as well. I told him to ask Adam to go along with him, but Adam didn’t answer his phone.

I made him a nice breakfast, played some sappy music with songs picked out all about leaving the one you loved and we sat and ate our meal together. He pleaded with me over the table, “Come on, don’t make me go alone, Julie. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

“I don’t know–”

“Please? Please come with me? Please come to Pennsylvania?” He started begging like a little kid, and eventually I gave into his charms. We both needed to get out of the house anyway, not just him. Our relationship was always at its best when we went away together to go seek whatever adventure we could find out there. And I was starting to forgive and forget about the trip to Montauk anyway.

We packed up quickly and then hit the road. We got to the city and the traffic was really bad and the GPS kept getting confused. I tried to fiddle with it to get it to work right, but Shane was already in a pissed off mood and grabbed it away from me.

“You are a fucking horrible navigator.” He fumed as the GPS gave out crazy directions because we kept passing the streets too quickly for it to catch up. He banged the GPS on the dashboard, turning to me to point out that it was all my fault that we were lost. “You are so entirely unreliable. This whole state is filled with fucking unreliable people! There is no one loyal in this whole state! There is nothing but people who are fucking cancers in my life. I should be in fucking Florida away from all the fucking cancers in my goddamn life.”

“I could drive if you want.” I tried, getting a little worried as he completely ignored the city traffic around him. He didn’t care if he hit anyone else, but I did. I didn’t mind traffic and figured it was the way we resolved things when we were coming back from Montauk, maybe it would work again this time.

“Just shut up!” He shouted. “The only way for you to help me is to shut the hell up! God, I feel like I’m going crazy. I wish I wasn’t here anymore. I just want to not be on this Earth anymore! Something has to be wrong with me! That’s it, isn’t it? I’ve been with you so long that I’m going crazy. I probably should be locked away, just to get away from you. Look at what you’ve done to me. I never should have trusted you, never should have dated you–”

“If you’re going to continue to talk to me that way, just let me out of the damn car!” I shouted back. I was no stranger to the city. I could find the train and get home by myself.

“I have a right to talk to you this way after all you’ve put me through!”

The car came to a red light and hearing that from him, I just got out on the sidewalk and slammed the door behind me. As he sped off without even caring that I was left behind on the sidewalk, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have my purse with me so I didn’t have any money with me. I also didn’t remember any phone numbers by heart to beg a ride home, except for Shane’s number.

Panicked, I ran into the nearest deli restaurant. “Can I please use someone’s phone? Please!”

Everyone looked at me like I was crazy and ignored me. Ah, New York City!

Finally, I begged someone on the street to let me use their phone and called Shane. As soon as he picked up I started begging, “Please come back to get me. Please? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please don’t leave me here. I don’t have a way home! My bag is in the car!”

He told me two random streets and said he was on the corner of them, then he added. “You have five minutes to get here or I’m leaving without you! You better hurry up!”

I hung up, gave the person back their phone back and started asking people on the street how to find the intersection that Shane had mentioned. Then I ran– I ran for blocks, through traffic, through no walk signs, I just needed to get to him before I was stranded in the city.

When I got back in the car finally, he continued to tell me I was a stupid bitch for getting out of the car. I just went numb and stared out the window for the remainder of the ride. There were no apologies this time– other than that, it was the same exact situation that we had been in two weeks earlier. The same exact situation that he had promised never to put me in again. He’d broken his word again and it had to be the last time for me. I had to leave now. All the promises he ever made to me after this would be meaningless now that I knew that his words were empty.

We drove home.

He apologized for losing his cool later, but it was too late. He tried being really nice to me and making me a special dinner but I just didn’t want to deal with it. I talked to Charity again that night. I told her what was up and she said I should come down and stay with Hope. She begged me to leave.

We spent Labor Day setting up for another one of his garage sales. I decided to just pretend like everything was okay while I worked in the background to pack and leave.

Shane invited Lilah and Mateo over to talk about starting up game night again. Meanwhile, he bitched about how Carmela was argumentative and wouldn’t listen to him so she wasn’t invited anymore. I knew that was mostly because of the time Carmela had picked me up from Shane’s house just to get me out of there for a few days. Shane didn’t want to hang out with Carmela anymore because she had made the last fight personal, as he said.

I got so pissed at him trash talking everyone that I started taking down all the signs that I had set up for the garage sale we were having. Mateo and Lilah looked at me like I was insane. It was just more of the same ridiculousness. Everyone was crazy but him, everyone was disloyal but him and everyone had to be respectful but him. He could scream at me every day and no one would care– and those that did care got cut down and discarded.

I told him the next day that I had rented a car and was leaving to go move to Virginia. After that, he was just pissed at me completely. He drove me to the rental place when I found out it was several miles away, because as he said, “Anything to help you get the fuck out of my house!”

The rental place wouldn’t let me take a truck out though, because I didn’t have a credit card. I pleaded with them, but they didn’t care. Shane got pissed off at that and told me on the way home, “I can’t even get rid of you, can I? You’re like a fucking cancer that I can’t fucking get rid of. I just want you gone.”

“I. Am. Trying. To. Go!” I told him, slowly, all my anger in every measured syllable.

He went to go watch television while I did some research. Apparently, the car rental place that was down the road from his house would allow people to rent SUVs from them with a debit card. I walked down there and got one myself, coming back to the house to his surprised face. There it was– the SUV that would take me out of his world and down to Virginia where I probably belonged.

He continued yelling at me while I packed me things up and every once in a while would ask if I needed help because he told me he wanted me gone as quickly as possible. I told him that I could manage all by myself, like I always did. Besides, I told him, the last time he had thrown me out of his house during that whole Easter debacle, he had shoved all my things in one garbage bag and managed to break a bunch of fragile items with his carelessness and drive to get me out.

“Did you take my goddamn blanket?” He asked. I had always figured that the burgundy one was mine, since he had bought it for me when I first moved in to make the place feel more like my own home. I shrugged. I knew it was already packed in the car– on the very bottom, and I refused to unpack everything just for him. “You fucking thief! You goddamn fucking thief!”

I really didn’t even care. Let him say what he wanted about me, I would be gone for good soon.

After I managed to get the last of my things into the SUV, I sat in the driver’s seat and watched as he waved goodbye from the front door of his house. He disappeared a moment later, shutting the door behind him. It had been almost two years since the night I first ended up there– two years of fun, laughter and so much darkness. I sat in the car for a while before realizing that if it was the last time we were ever going to see each other maybe I should try to do a better goodbye. So putting aside my differences, I knocked on the door of his house again.

“What do you want, Julie?” He asked in a disgruntled tone. His walls were up and I was no longer welcomed behind them. I probably should have just left without trying to talk to him, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Despite my good intentions, this moment would led to years of trouble down the line.

“I just want to say goodbye.”

He opened the door, held out his hand for a handshake and then pulled me into a tight embrace. We cried on each other’s shoulders for a while, telling each other that we were really sorry and we didn’t mean it and maybe we could still work things out if we get some space from each other for a while.

“You can’t leave without letting me cook you breakfast.” He finally said. I knew he was stalling; I loved him even more for it. While I was eating, he kept asking if I needed anything else while simultaneously making me some lunch for the ride. It was funny how after all we went through with each other, there was this entire other side to us once we let down the walls. Inside, we were screaming like children to be heard but our pride blocked out everything else.

I thanked him for the lunch, then hugged him for a very long time in the kitchen. Then, he finally whispered, “I don’t want you to go.”

I started crying. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted him to say this to me days ago– weeks ago! Not when the SUV that I had rented for several hundred dollars was already parked in the drive way. The dam had broken finally, but now we were left with floods of emotion. I held onto him, clinging to the life I had once known. I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone any more than I did him at that moment. Then, I whispered back. “I have to go.”

“I know.” He nodded and started tearing up too.

We knew it was the end. We knew it had to stop. We couldn’t go on like this.

Maybe once I was down there, things would make more sense to us– I could work on me and he could work on him and somewhere we could meet in the middle. We could still talk, still work through our issues, but we would both be safer this way. I asked him to hold onto my cat and take care of her for me. I was coming back for her someday. I was coming back for him some day.

He promised he would take good care of my cat and I could have her back whenever I wanted if it still didn’t work out between us. He told me to call him when I got to Virginia and we would work it all out on the phone.

I cried all the way down to my new place of residence. Along the way, I stopped in each state and bought postcards so I could mail them to him so he wouldn’t miss a single state of my adventure. Every state I passed was a mini-betrayal to my own heart, yet my foot stayed on the gas pedal for some reason.



I called him like he asked me to the very night I arrived in Virginia. His voice sounded tired, aching to reach me. “The cats miss you.”

“Just the cats?” I asked. I knew this was code for what he couldn’t say. “Or maybe you too?”

“I– I miss you too, Julie.” He told me, then after taking a breath he added, “Very much.”

“I miss you so much, Shane.” I told him, quietly so none of my new roommates could hear our conversation. I had only just finished unpacking the car and people were helping set up a time when I could drop it off at the rental lot. Everyone was doing so much to make me feel welcomed there and yet there I was still talking to my ex.

“I’m so sorry about everything that I said to you.” He said. “I was just confused.”

“I’m sorry too.”

Then we said that we loved each other and finally said goodbye. There was so much to work through but hopefully, now that I was on some solid ground we could find a way to communicate our needs to each other. Maybe we could both get help or figure out what was wrong with ourselves. We could make both our links strong so our chain would never break. Absence, after all, often made the heart grow fonder.