Last updated on October 22nd, 2025 at 11:19 am
“Angela, why did you suddenly stop talking to me? I mean, I feel like I now know the reason, but I want to hear it from you.”
I’m on a video call, and it is frankly an answered prayer. I can’t remember when I prayed, but I know that this is a dream come true. My business is doing fine, my mental health is better, and I can say that I’ve finally moved on from the trauma of my childhood abuse, but somehow, a video call with Angela seems to trump all these other answered prayers.
Not to be vain but she’s looking so beautiful, my heart wants to burst from so many emotions. I almost want to ask her to stand up and take a spin for me but it’s too soon. She rolls her eyes at my question and smiles. Her smile awakens every part of me, of my soul. I feel at home. It’s crazy and I might just be digging my own grave but I’m almost helpless to Angela’s allure.
“Well, it’s what you know. I was pregnant and didn’t want to be seen.” She says.
“You didn’t want to be seen or you didn’t want me to know?” I ask. I don’t intend to miss out on this opportunity to ask all my burning questions.
“Both.”
“Angela, you have to give me more. I want this closure. One day, I’m chatting with you and life’s good, the next day, I’m getting no messages from you again.” I say, my voice almost breaking. I’m slowly becoming an emotional mess. Angela unravels me and then puts me back. She soothes my soul.
“I was pregnant at 21 and the father, the man responsible for it, couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t face the world alone. I couldn’t face you, not with our history at the time.” She answers, looking solemnly at my face through the screen. I see the hurt in her eyes and my heart sinks to my belly. Am I making her relive an unpleasant experience?
“Angela, am I selfish? Tell me if I’m asking too much. We only started speaking two days ago and it doesn’t feel like it, but realistically, it’s only been two days after five years.”
“No no, it’s fine.” She sniffs. “You know you have a way of making me comfortable. I don’t know why or how you do it.”
“This is what I need to hear, Angela. We can continue later if you want. It’s absolutely fine.”
“Joe, it’s okay. It feels good to be able to share the experience with someone apart from those who witnessed it, to speak of everything that I kept to myself because I couldn’t really burden my support system.”
“Alright, Sweetcakes. I’m here.” I say, almost whispering. I don’t know what I expected but this call has just gotten way more intense than I could have ever imagined. Still, a part of me is scared because this isn’t the first time that Angela and I have been vulnerable with each other, yet she chose the other guy. There’s no other guy now, but it doesn’t mean that she wants me. Maybe I’m only a safe space for her and she doesn’t see me in that light.
“It just hurts because I sometimes wonder…” She looks to see if she has my attention. I smile to let her know that I’m all hers right now.
“Wonder what?”
“You know, he wasn’t like bad in the way that we expect bad partners to be. Growing up, a bad partner is someone who hits you and cheats. The bar is so low, Joe. If a partner doesn’t exhibit these two traits, it can be so hard to find the words or to validate yourself and your experience. And that was my struggle. If he wasn’t hitting me or cheating on me, how could I say that he was bad for me?”
“I can’t pretend to really understand your experience, but I’m all ears. I’m with you,
Angela.”
“Well, the relationship reflected me. It was a mirror of what I had to work on, my blind spot. It didn’t feel good, it wasn’t good but I couldn’t name it. Emotional unavailability? Commitment issues? I didn’t have a name for it. At some point, I settled because I heard relationships are hard. But how hard? What’s the standard? Who measures these things? He said that he loved me so I just thought that whatever I was feeling was the difficulty of relationships. Two different people trying to form a connection, it can’t be that easy, you know?”
“Yeah. I’m here, Sweetcakes.”
“I can’t paint him bad. I can’t afford to make him look bad. Now I know that what I accepted then was a measure of my self-esteem, my self-worth. If you don’t value yourself, how can others value you? If anything, they’ll only end up dictating what your value is. I was going through it then and I was ashamed to face you. Also, I didn’t want to involve you. You didn’t deserve it.”
“That’s kind of you. I didn’t deserve it, indeed. But I may have preferred a little closure or an official ending of the friendship rather than being ghosted and left to wonder what I did wrong.”
“You have a point. That wasn’t really cool.”
