The art of breaking men.

Before the wreckage, there was rhythm. Mornings with Chris were sacred—quiet rituals that belonged to no one but us. The sun would rise and so would we, not in a rush, but in ceremony. I made my smoothie, thick with fruit and ambition. He brewed his mushroom tea like it was holy. We’d sit cross-legged, faces turned to the window, letting the frequency music wash over us like a tide that only we could hear. Sometimes we talked about our goals—short-term, long-term, the empire we were building out of dust and devotion. Other times, we didn’t speak at all. We just breathed, synced like two notes in the same song. But then the tea stopped steaming. The windows stayed closed. And the music—our music—started to sound like static. The change was quiet at first. A new edge to his voice. A sharper hunger behind his eyes. He said he was tired. He said he was stressed. I wanted to believe him, because the alternative felt too familiar. Too close. It started with pills. Just sometimes, he said. Just to take the edge off. He still woke up with me, still held me like I was made of myth. I watched him line up vitamins next to things that weren’t vitamins, and I told myself it wasn’t what it looked like. But it was. I knew the shape of that shadow. I’d grown up under it. My father was an addict my whole life. But he also made the best steaks in the world. He told the kinds of stories that made you believe in magic, and he never gave up on me. He smelled like gasoline and peppermint, and he loved me in ways I still carry in my bones. He was broken, but he was mine. And now here was Chris—kind, brilliant, laughing-while-he’s-burning Chris—crumbling in front of me in the same quiet way. I kept waiting for the monster to show up. But he didn’t. Just the man I loved, unraveling, thread by thread. I didn’t leave. Of course I didn’t. We still had Sundays. Still had the sunroom, thick with plants and ghosts. Still had those long drives with no destination, his hand on my thigh like a promise he meant but couldn’t keep. We still did our yard-work together then cooked on the grill afterwards. I told myself I could save him. That love, real love, was holding on when the tide came in. But I was lying. He was lying. He’d disappear into the garage for hours, come back wired or hollowed out. Some nights, he’d talk about our future like he could still see it. Other nights, he’d sit so still I thought he’d vanished from inside his own skin. I’d light the candles. He’d forget to roll the joints. The incense curled around us like a warning we couldn’t read. And still, I loved him. Still, he was the best thing that ever happened to me. But that’s the thing about rot—it starts where you can’t see it. And by the time you do, it’s already everywhere. He started missing work. At first, it was once in a while—overslept, stomach bug, migraines. Then it became patterns. Mondays blurred into Wednesdays. Sometimes he was too high to stand up straight. Other times, he locked himself in the bedroom for days—four, once. I counted. Four days of silence, of shuffling noises and muttered promises through the door, like a ghost trying to remember it was once a person. He was well known in the community. Everyone loved Chris. The man who always remembered your birthday, who never told a customer no and stayed late, who made strangers feel like they belonged. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him—except the version I lived with. The one I cleaned up after, covered for, cried over. The one who was slowly drowning in the very house we built together. He was slipping, and I was slipping with him. All the work, all the struggle, the years we clawed our way up from nothing—it was all on the line because he couldn’t keep his hands off the thing that was hollowing him out. He talked about rehab like it was a vacation he’d eventually take. Just… not now. Not this week. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t that bad. But he was. And I knew it. I became his PR team—calling into work for him, making excuses, keeping the lie dressed up just enough that no one would see it bleed. I was trying to save his name when I couldn’t even save his body. I started putting him out. Not because I stopped loving him, but because I couldn’t keep dragging a man who didn’t want to stand. His mother always took him back. That part made me hate her a little. She let him stay there, in that same basement I found him in when we first met, like she was keeping the light on for his worst self. Like she wanted him to fail, if it meant he’d come home. I told her what he was doing. Told her he was killing himself, slowly and beautifully, like a boy setting fire to a paper house. She just looked at me, eyes full of pride and denial, and said not to tell her what to do with her house and her son. I told her if he died, I hoped it would happen under her roof—not mine. But that’s not how it went. The night he died, I didn’t fight him. I was just tired—bone tired. Tired of talking him down, dragging him up, begging him to choose life like it was a team sport. He came home strung out and smiling like nothing was wrong, like love was still enough. I didn’t argue. I didn’t cry. I let it go. And in the early morning hours he was gone. His mother showed up after the EMTs pronounced him dead. She stood in the doorway for five full minutes. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared at me like she was waiting for me to apologize for something I couldn’t name. Maybe she thought I’d protected him too hard. Or not enough. Maybe she wanted him back in the basement, broken but breathing. But I got the last night. I got the silence. I got the body. And I still don’t know if that was a mercy or a curse. His mother never cried in front of me. Not at the hospital. Not at the house. Not at the funeral where people stood up and told stories about the man he used to be—like he was a myth, like he hadn’t spent the last year nodding off in his own filth while I sat outside the door trying to remember how to breathe. They said he was full of light. That he brought people joy. That he lit up a room. And he did. I’m not saying they lied. I’m just saying I lived in the part of the house where the light didn’t reach. People kept asking if I was okay. They said it like they expected a show of gratitude. Like grief was supposed to make me soft. Like I should be grateful that at least I got to love him. But I wasn’t soft. I wasn’t grateful. I was tired. Tired of carrying men who don’t want to save themselves. Tired of watching them bleed on people who didn’t cut them. Tired of standing between someone and their own self-destruction like that made me noble instead of stupid. I stopped talking to people for a while. I stopped answering calls. I threw out his shirts. I let the garden die. I needed a break from being someone’s lifeline. From being strong. From being good. So I picked up my phone. Not to talk. Not to cry. Not to reconnect. I picked it up to find him—the next one. The one who thought he could play me. The one who sent a message that said “u up?” like he had any idea what kind of woman he was inviting into his world. And when I found him, I smiled. “Say please, pig.” He laughed at first. They always do. Until they realize I’m not joking. Until they realize I don’t want their affection—I want their surrender. Until they realize that all the softness I gave to men like Chris died with him. And what’s left? That’s mine now.