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A phoenix’s grief. A witch’s reckoning.
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This blog discusses miscarriage, mental health crises, suicidal ideation, hypomania, and emotional abuse. Please take care while reading, and know you’re not alone.
If you are in the United States and struggling with thoughts of self-harm or suicide, you can dial or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For international readers, please look up local hotlines in your country.
The Life I Built, The Life I Lost
It has been three years since I hit the lowest I had ever been. I am a strong woman, and to reach that basement of rock bottom was not an overnight thing. It was a gradual build. Like the board game Mountains of Madness — you start out sane and slowly ascend into madness the further you climb. That was me.
There was so much happening behind closed doors. However, we mutually agreed to never reveal that to the outside world. Whenever you saw us, we were the goofy couple at family holidays, we had a home with a fenced-in yard for our dog, both of us working on our bachelor’s degrees, climbing in our state government careers, and taking jam-packed vacations.
I had a mother-in-law who adored me, nieces and nephews that I loved since the day they were born, the respect of my husband, family, friends, co-workers, and community. I had intimacy with my husband that felt like a secret language, and history that only comes from growing up together — knowing each other’s scars and still loving each other unconditionally.
That wasn’t just young love. That was my whole heart, stitched together with years of effort, and I built it with blood, sweat, and tears.
It looked like forever — until it wasn’t.
Now that I’m of sounder mind, reflecting, and attempting to heal, it’s time to set the record straight. This is my perspective, told honestly and to the best of my recollection, while still respecting my ex-husband’s privacy with some of his more sensitive details. And please keep in mind that, even now, I still cannot share the whole story because of that.
Prologue: The First Cracks
The cracks started forming almost immediately. Our first big conflict foreshadowed the end: he had an inappropriate friendship with a girl online while starting a new relationship with me. When she turned mean toward me, he cut her out of his life — but that was a big red flag.
Fast forward: we’d just come home from a movie date with friends when he confided in me about his history of mental health issues. Out of respect for his privacy, I won’t go into details. But in hindsight, I wasn’t equipped to handle it. Nineteen-year-old Nicki thought she could fix him, like I was some teenage witch armed with nothing but love spells.
We moved out of our parents’ houses and into an apartment on Valentine’s Day, 2014. He had just started working for the State and decided to pursue his education. First came a CompTIA A+ certification course — he passed the class but failed the exam. Then he shifted gears into programming, but Python overwhelmed him. He failed the class twice before transferring to Davenport University and eventually chasing IT Project Management with a focus in Information Security.
When he got too overwhelmed, I picked up the slack. I ended up taking his classes for him, juggling two bachelor’s degrees at once — one in my name and one in his. It bit me in the ass later when his student loans came due and he felt I should pay them. I’d taken loans so he could attend full-time because I wanted to rip the Band-Aid off; he wanted to “pay as you go.” Truthfully, I wanted him to drop out, but he refused to let it go.
Then came Mother’s Day weekend, five months before our wedding. His parents announced they were breaking up — news to us, since we hadn’t even realized they were dating again. What followed was chaos: two grown adults devolving into bickering teenagers, even showing up drunk and arguing on our porch on a work night. We weren’t sure they could both attend the wedding without a scene. That stress simmered under the surface, setting the stage for what came next.
One afternoon in the Walmart parking lot, I pulled into a space while he played Pokémon Go in AR mode, phone up. A teenage girl was bent over in the bed of a pickup truck, fastening something. Her mother scoffed at us, jumped in the truck with her daughter, then whipped around to snap a picture of our license plate. We assumed she thought he was taking pictures of her daughter bent over (a teenager shouldn’t have been wearing Daisy Dukes in the first place). I was shaken. I’d never dealt with conflict like that before. But my worry set him off. That night, in our kitchen, he collapsed into his first panic attack. He fell to the floor, hyperventilating, while I stood between him and the knives, trying to calm him down.
By then, we were so close to saying “I do” but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through with it. However, we had already poured so much money into the wedding. Instead, I pushed him into therapy. A counselor convinced him to try anti-depressants, and from there, we spent years mixing and matching prescriptions, chasing some elusive balance that never came.
First Madness Card: Sutton
For a long time, I thought I was safe. I thought he loved me. I felt it in his laugh, in the way he leaned into me, in the way his eyes lit up when they met mine. I believed in us so fiercely that I mistook comfort for permanence. I held onto that belief like it could outrun reality.
Then COVID hit, and the walls of our home closed in. He had always been afraid of being alone, and that fear sharpened in the silence. Instead of turning toward me, he buried himself in the glow of a screen. He built new connections in Sea of Thieves, and together we poured hours into our Animal Crossing: New Horizons community. But even with me sitting beside him, he was already slipping away.
Then she appeared — bright wigs, boobs on full display, a neon sign flashing distraction.
And in that moment, it was as if I’d drawn my first real madness card in Mountains of Madness. I watched the foundation I had poured myself into rot beneath my feet. He told me it was just “support for small streamers.” Then he jumped into Sea of Thieves in the middle of the night to rescue her—his damsel in digital distress.
When I told him I wasn’t comfortable, he looked at me like I was the problem. Don’t you trust me? he asked.
I did. God help me, I did. But I shouldn’t have.
Premonition
Shortly after she came into his life, we decided to move up to Traverse City—further isolating him, and me right along with him.
He started coming home disconnected. Beer. Office. Headset. Her. He swore it wasn’t just her—it was a group of friends now. A group he said the only difference between them and me was that we lived together and had sex sometimes.
That single sentence was like flipping over an encounter card I couldn’t beat. Everything we had, reduced to geography and convenience. The kind of blow that chips away at your sanity meter without you realizing how far it’s dropped.
By September 2021, I couldn’t ignore my gut anymore. I was watching Premonition when something inside me twisted, a sixth sense screaming that something was off. Call it intuition, call it witch blood, but I knew. I checked his Discord. I know it was a violation of privacy—but what I found was absolute betrayal.
It wasn’t innocent—it was intimacy. Long, late-night conversations. Private jokes. Pet names that had no place in a marriage. She signed off with hearts, called him honey, and made herself the person he leaned on when things fell apart. She wasn’t just a streamer. She became his emotional confidant—the role that was supposed to be mine.
I was sick to my stomach. I left a sticky note on his screen with the promise ring he had given me taped to it—because I sure as hell wasn’t giving him my grandmother’s diamond, the center stone of my wedding ring. The note said, simply: It’s me or her, you fucking liar.
I called my mom, packed up the dogs, and left. I sat in a gas station parking lot until I could breathe again, then drove to a roadside park just outside of town. I stayed there until he got home, realized what I had seen, and started blowing up my phone. By that point, Jessie and Ryan (my sister and brother-in-law) were already on their way to back me up.
I went home and we talked. This time, he chose me. I told him to cut off contact with that friend group and to tell her he loved his wife.
The next day, we went out with Jessie and Ryan, and he was pouting. He told me that without his friends, he would fall into a depression he couldn’t recover from. Eventually, I caved and let him run back to them—with strict boundaries in place.
And for a while, things improved. So much so that we conceived a baby. I let myself believe we were stitching something new together out of the wreckage, like drawing a rare tool card that might finally tip the odds in our favor.
But hope is fragile. And then, at the end of January, the miscarriage happened. The grief didn’t just arrive—it swallowed me whole.
Second Madness Card: Miscarriage
The second madness card hit harder than the first. I broke—loudly, visibly. He cried—quietly, stoically.
And because he was silent, he got to be the victim. Because I was guttural in my grief, I became the villain. My hormones were a storm, my body reeling from the miscarriage. I slipped into a hypomanic episode—a state often mistaken for drama instead of what it really is: the mind unraveling under unbearable weight. His silence looked like strength; my unraveling looked like madness.
The blood hadn’t even dried from my body before he ran back to her for comfort, disregarding the boundaries I had put in place. It felt like drawing an impossible challenge card at the very moment you’re weakest, when your sanity tokens are already gone.
A friend said to me, “Well, he’s grieving a loss, too.” I understand that—but the appropriate person to grieve with is your wife. Not the mistress.
Third Madness Card: The Cocktail
By March, we couldn’t be in the same room without fighting. Every conversation turned into a battle, and the tension was so thick it was choking us both. He ended up moving in with our friends just to keep the peace. One night, things got particularly bad.
What finally sent me over the edge was hearing him say—again—that he didn’t feel comfortable having a baby with me right now. It was something he’d repeated more than once, and every time it cut deeper. This was the dream we had been working toward from the very beginning, and now it was being dangled out of reach.
It felt like drawing my final madness card at the worst possible time because sanity tokens were gone, my tool cards spent, and there was nothing left to counter the effect.
I didn’t want to die, but I might have if my mom hadn’t noticed something was off in my texts — I was misspelling words, and for someone as proper a texter as me, that was a red flag. I really just didn’t want to feel that way anymore. That night, I mixed Xanax and wine and blacked out.
I do remember bits and pieces. My mom called my ex-husband and demanded he check on me. He showed up and found me sobbing. After years of me carrying him through countless panic attacks, he couldn’t handle me through one of my own. Instead, he asked my mom to drive three hours in the middle of the night to deal with me.
When I woke up, I was angry. What should have been private, tender, and protected was instead turned into gossip. My lowest moment was carried straight to our friends, his co-worker, and, of course, Sutton.
Meanwhile, he got the sympathy. He got the validation. His silence once again told the story for him: he was patient and strong, and I was crazy and cruel.
In the aftermath, I was in such bad shape that my therapist recommended an outpatient program. Even the professionals saw I couldn’t keep going like this. And on the drives between Charlotte and Traverse City, darker thoughts crept in. Sometimes, I caught myself thinking I could just steer into the overpass. I didn’t want to die — but the pain was so relentless, I just wanted it to stop.
The Last Checkpoint: Therapy
After that night, I went back home for a while. My mom tried to help me release some of the chaos inside me by taking me to rage room—the kind where you go in and smash glass and furniture until your arms ache. For a little while, it felt good to swing at something that couldn’t break me back.
A couple of days later, he and I tried talking again. He agreed to come down that weekend. I went shopping for a dress—something that didn’t feel like me at all. A yellow floral sundress, bright and fragile, like I was trying to costume myself into a new role. We met at Texas Roadhouse, sat across from each other like strangers pretending to be old friends, and talked. We agreed that we still wanted to make this work.
So, we tried couple’s therapy. We started with his therapist, who turned out to be a complete whack job. I was trying to defend myself while he sat there in silence, looking broken. I asked her point-blank if she would feel comfortable if her husband was turning to another woman online to meet his emotional needs. She admitted, personally, no—but then shrugged and said, “It’s a different generation, though.” Like…what the actual hell?
We switched to another couple’s therapist after that—someone highly recommended. We only went a few times. Each session followed the same pattern: I spoke, and he stayed quiet, wearing his brokenness like a costume. He would look at me with hurt eyes, and I became the aggressor again. The therapist saw the dynamic and sided with him—not because of facts, but because my voice was louder, my pain less contained. To them, silence looked like fragility and emotion looked like attack.
It felt like drawing useless tool cards from the deck—things that were supposed to help but couldn’t be played, no matter how badly I needed them. Eventually, the therapist admitted he didn’t know what to tell us. That was our last session—the Wednesday before the Fourth of July.
After that session, we mutually agreed to window shop on Bumble, just to see what was out there. By then, I had already mentally moved on, but I was freaking out. I wanted a baby and, in my hypomanic state, I started looking for a baby daddy. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have just pulled out my retirement and gone to a sperm bank instead of blowing it on what came next.
I don’t know what exactly he thought when he agreed to this. Maybe he believed some kind of open relationship would work? Maybe he was just trying to keep one foot in both worlds. I’ll never know for sure.
But, to be fully transparent, I crossed the line and swiped right on Dave, my current husband. However, I did keep the conversation neutral with him until July 3. We mostly talked about the house he was renovating at the time.
On July 3, I told my ex-husband I couldn’t do this anymore. And for a moment, I thought it stuck. But then there was a miscommunication between him and my mom. He thought she said I wanted to talk and maybe try to work this out again—but in reality, I was moving on.
When I got back to Traverse City, he admitted that Sutton had floated the idea—if, maybe after a year, they could start dating. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the most satisfying I told you so ever.
Things got toxic fast after that. Boundaries blurred, accusations flew, and it felt like every conversation was laced with venom.
He ended up pursuing Sutton, even driving to Iowa for a romantic weekend together (this man never drove prior to our move up north). Now, at the same time, I was flying out to see Dave the next weekend, but my ex-husband didn’t know that yet—so yeah, it stung watching him jump right into bed with her.
He came back glowing—because Sutton bites. An admission carved into my memory like a curse. Overnight he went from vanilla to discount Christian Grey. 🙄
Despite us both moving on, we were still having sex, too—and that was a big mistake.
Widowed by the Living
After one especially bad misunderstanding, my ex-husband refused to leave the house. I was desperate and reached out to our friends for help, asking if I could stay with them for the night. Their response gutted me—they said they didn’t feel comfortable having me there. Another door slammed shut. Another reminder that even my friends were slipping away, like allies abandoning the expedition mid-climb.
Because of that situation, Dave—protective and furious—threatened to kick my ex-husband’s ass. In response, my ex-husband somehow got his hands on a gun “for protection.” Given his mental health history, the thought of him armed terrified me. It felt like flipping an encounter card with stakes far higher than anything I’d drawn before.
I told his mother, hoping she would understand why I was worried. Instead, she turned on me. That single conversation wrecked our relationship and cut me off from a family I had been part of for a decade.
Rebound
Once our relationship was officially over, I felt a weight lift off my chest. I made it to the rescue plane. Even something as simple as ordering pizza felt empowering—because I was ordering it for just me. I could pick whatever toppings I wanted. That small freedom reminded me I was still my own person.
But my biological clock was ticking loud, and I’ll admit—I rebounded fast. From the outside, it looked reckless. From the inside, it felt like survival.
In hindsight, it was destructive. In the months that followed, I walked away from a job I loved. I moved back in with my mom and stepdad. I pulled out my entire retirement—still one of my biggest regrets—to spend three months in Kansas City, Missouri fast-tracking my relationship with Dave.
It was messy. Too fast. Too much. But that’s the truth of it.
I wouldn’t change it, because I have two daughters I am obsessed with. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. If you ever find yourself in my position—take a slice of your retirement and go to a sperm bank. Don’t torch your whole future for a man.
A Phoenix in Combat Boots
Hopefully, I’ve managed to tell my story more clearly now than I ever could back then. I’m beyond the hypomanic episode—looking back with perspective, though not fully healed. Because I didn’t just lose a baby. I lost the man I was building my life with. I lost the version of myself that once felt whole. And I lost friends who chose his side because it was easier, and family who once loved me like their own daughter.
But I rose. A decade of dreams burned to ash, and still—I rose. Scarred. Smoldering. Stronger. A phoenix in combat boots.
Now I carry my fire carefully. I’ll teach my daughters not just how to love, but how to rebuild if love betrays them. To understand that survival sometimes looks messy. To know that rising can mean walking through fire before you ever find your strength again.
Because even in ruins, I remember: I built once. I can build again. But this time, it’s for me.
Witches don’t stay buried. We rise.
Special Thank You
Through all of this, there was one friend who showed up when I was unraveling—Tom. He didn’t try to fix me or judge me; he just made sure I wasn’t completely alone in the dark.
He distracted me the best he could, pulling me out on hikes and little adventures when I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed. He made sure I ate something besides peanut M&Ms and popcorn. And when the nights felt unbearable, he stayed late so I wouldn’t have to sit with my thoughts in silence.
It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t a grand gesture. But it mattered. He mattered. And I’ll always be grateful that in the middle of all that chaos, I had someone who reminded me I was still worth showing up for.
Lyrics written by me, plugged into Soniva, and protected under copyright. Please do not copy, reproduce, or distribute without permission. 🎶🖤
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
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