I was a grown-ass woman who knew better than to be driving alone clear across town and into the woods to seek out a total stranger — toward a white mailbox with no house behind it- only a dirt path through dark woods. I still can’t exactly explain why I felt compelled to keep moving.

It wasn’t about the song, the lyrics, or the voice that delivered them. It was something I couldn’t explain — a pull toward something significant. I knew it was dangerous.

I went anyway — open and unafraid.

What happened that night was nothing I expected or could have imagined. What ignited in two minutes and forty-eight seconds altered the course of my life and permanently changed me.

It’s time to tell you everything. And I will — but not today, because this moment is not about June 11, 2016.

Today is about June 11, 2020 — the day I decided I had no choice but to leave.

Neither of us dared mention a word about our four-year anniversary. Here we were, two people as close as two people could be, having sacrificed and survived incredible hardships — losing everything together more than once. We put everything on the line for one singular purpose we were equally committed to — sharing our lives, practically joined at the hip, doing extraordinary things together. We thought nothing could tear us apart.

We spent that day in the most deafening silence, not daring to admit the day was significant. That would have meant facing up to each other and what had broken us. That silence — loud with everything we could never say — engulfed the day.

Nine days later, I walked down twelve stairs and left. It was the worst day of my life.

Pulling myself out of that orbit was the most difficult decision I have ever made. It broke me.

Here is what nobody tells you about leaving: when you are the one who walks away, you are not allowed to grieve. The world has decided your grief is invalid because the exit was your idea.

Just get over it.

You dodged a bullet.

Just get over it.

You should be celebrating — you got out.

Just get over it.

Best thing you ever did.

You left, remember? As if the hardest decision of my life should cost me nothing. As if choosing to go means you stop loving someone. It doesn’t. I know, because it has been six years, and I am not over it.

Just get over it.

It wasn’t really love. It was a trauma bond.

Just get over it.

Aren’t you relieved?

Just get over it.

You’re just addicted to a pattern.

Nobody congratulates you for amputating your own life.

Except they do — cheerfully, constantly — and every congratulatory comment only rips the wound open.

That is not what leaving him felt like.

Grief is a loss. This was a loss. I didn’t just lose my best friend and my partner. I caused him pain.

If he had died, people would have called my grief healthy.

If he had left me, people would have called my grief healthy.

I’m the one who left. And for that, I’m supposed to villainize him and call myself a survivor. Find someone new. Get over it.

Truth is, I don’t want to be over it.

I want to carry it in a way that is now healthy and empathetic to both of us.

I have spent six years being told, in a hundred polite ways, that remembering this day makes me broken. That telling a story that involves him in a positive way means something about me that is somehow wrong. What most well-meaning people mean when they tell me to get over it is: Erase it from your life as if it never happened. So I stopped telling anyone.

I carry this date silently, every year, the way you carry something precious through a crowd — close to the chest, telling no one what’s in the box.

I’m done carrying it silently.

I’m done carrying it shamefully.

I’m done apologizing for having done it in the first place.

I’m done blaming him and I am done blaming me.

I’m done pretending those years were a mistake — thrown away, wasted.

They were not. They were a gift.

Between all the moments that led to the end there was joy, laughter, music, and love. Even the darkest moments are times I wouldn’t trade for anything.

He saw me in a way I had never been brave enough to let anyone see.

He encouraged me to use my gifts.

He taught me how to love myself and be authentic.

The gifts he gave me were priceless and everlasting. He saw parts of me I had hidden so well I’d almost lost them myself, and he pulled them out and made me use them.

And even in our final conversation, he demanded I move forward so I can shine. I want to keep those parts he polished exposed to daylight.

Those gifts are meaningless unless I use them. So I am using them. All of them. That is not failing to move on. That is the opposite.

I now understand love in a much different way. If I had not experienced those years, I don’t think I ever would have been able to appreciate a different way to love and be loved.

Today, on the ten-year mark of the night it all began, I am going to start telling the whole story. The good, the magic, the sacrifices, and the dark side.

It is a memoir of this time as I remember it. The Poet’s Song — Love, Power and the Gravity of a Genius.

It is all true. It is all mine.

It took me six years to get brave enough, and today is the day to bring it to light.

This is not a revenge story.

I am not looking for closure.

This is not a survival story.

I don’t expect to get over it.

This is a true story, as I remember it.

This is a love story that never got its happy ending.

It happened — and it is significant.

My story to tell.

And often, the very things that make someone extraordinary — the things you love most about them — are the same things that make them dangerous.

I loved someone who was both, completely, at the same time. People should know what that actually looks like. From the inside.

So no. I will not get over it. At least not in the way the world expects me to.

I am going to do something much harder.

I am going to celebrate it. Grieve it. Face it. Make my life better because of everything that happened after I drove into the woods that night a decade ago.

I am going to tell it. Every moment.

It deserves to be turned into something good.

Even darkness deserves to shine.

The people who love me may or may not understand. And that’s okay.

I believe the best way to “get over” anything is to become undeniable — the person you became because of it. And the person you must become to own it.

Follow me. It starts now.

© 2026 Deborah Parker. All rights reserved.