Look, I already know what you are thinking:
“Yes, Melinda. He was the problem. He treated you poorly. Blah blah.”
But that is not the point, is it?
If I had truly valued myself, I would not have stayed on that rollercoaster—looping around disrespect, manipulation, and little breadcrumb-croutons of affection. He made it clear that my weight, my age, my autism, my race, my nationality—any of it—could be used against me in moments of emotional constipation. And I stayed.
That is on me.
Do not expect someone to change just because you can see their potential. That might be your rose-coloured glasses talking. People who want you in their life work to keep you there. People who hurt you try to make it right.
We all mess up. But parasites? Parasites destroy. They feed on light and love and vulnerability. They consume.
And then they move on.
They do not heal—they hide.
Honestly, they would make a decent X-File.
But okay—what if I was wrong? What if he really was just… human. Altruistic, thoughtful, oddly charming. Trying his best. Maybe hiding his past consumed him. Maybe everything he buried started surfacing. Maybe his old coping strategies stopped working. Add in job stress, COVID, family drama, a massive drinking problem, and yeah—meltdown achieved.
A connection—with me—came with exposure. I saw through things. I asked questions. I wrote blogs and used his name.
He did not ask me to take them down. That would have meant admitting he read them. He could not do that. So instead, he got angry. Not because what I said was untrue—but because others were seeing it.
He started punishing me for my honesty.
Short replies. Discarding me the moment he got what he came for. It spiralled. Every misstep got a new tag. And he just… could not truly be sorry.
He could not explain. He could not own anything. He hated how exposed he felt—while I was begging to be seen. Eventually I wanted out. He let me go. But life does not always play nice with endings.
We kept orbiting each other.
Miserable satellites stuck in an emotional eclipse. And still—neither of us really understood how we got here.
How We Took Two Aching People and Made Each Other Worse, the title of my memoirs.
