He sent a text. “I can’t do this anymore.” I begged him to reconsider. Collapsed on the floor, my mom held me. “I'm sorry for the things I’ve said to you.” He called. Emailed. Harassed my friends. “He won’t stop. He’s losing it.” He’d message me while on dates, asking where I was and who I was with. I didn’t know how he knew.
I walked home barefoot in a foreign city. We cried about how things fell apart. My vision blurred at the betrayal. Trapped. No safety. I swung. He threatened to jump out the window. I don’t remember the rest.
I said goodbye and I told him I loved him after I asked how we got it so wrong.
In the back seat of my friend’s car, I watched a desert landscape in the winter through the window as I told them “I think he’s been logging into my accounts. I feel bad because I know he’s desperate.” They said “plenty of people feel desperate, but they don’t do that.”