Mental Spiraling and Their Silence Hurting More Than Words
Mental Health + Context
I went almost two full weeks without my anti-depressant medication because of a backorder/supply issue. Around day 5 or 6 I started to really feel the shift. This medication, especially at the higher dosage I’m on, causes withdrawal effects if stopped suddenly. I knew that. Cris knew that. I just didn’t know what it would actually feel like. In the three years I’ve been on it, I’d never gone this long without. Maybe a day or two at most. So this was uncharted territory.
The first four or five days weren’t so bad. But then I started to feel overwhelmed by things I’d normally handle fine. Small stressors felt huge. Emotions felt disproportionate. I could recognize it was happening, but stopping it or soothing myself was a big struggle.
Around day 10 or 11, I was cutting and milling rough lumber for the wood countertops on the boat using heavy-duty woodworking machinery. I don’t drink or use cannabis when using dangerous machines like that. Sketchy and they will eat limbs, never mind a finger. So this day, I was very sober.
It was sometime late August, maybe the first week of September. I can’t place the exact date because my text history only goes back to the end of November. That’s when I got a “new” phone after the old one got water-damaged when I fell in the water leaving Bruce’s boat.
The Trigger: A Spiral and a Text
On the day I was milling wood, I got stuck in a negative inner-thought loop. I couldn’t shake it or think rationally. The idea that Cris thinks I was a narcissist was spiralling. For every rational thought I had telling myself that she doesn’t think that about me, I’d find two reasons she does. I couldn’t silence it. It consumed me. Crying while using those machines is probably as dangerous as alcohol and I was a sobbing mess.
The only way I could think to break the spiral was to just ask her. So I texted something like, “I know this is out of nowhere, but do you think I’m a narcissist?” A simple yes or no would have quieted the noise. Instead, I got avoidance. Questions back at me like “Why do I have to answer that? Why does it matter?”
Mentally, I didn’t have the ability to explain my chaotic thought process and just needed yes/no reassurance.
I was already mentally struggling. I told her that. I was crying most of that day, feeling like I was unraveling. It wasn’t her fault. I wasn’t blaming her. I just needed something small to help me. I wanted connection, but it felt like I was met with a wall.
As more messages went unanswered, my mind filled in the blanks. It started to feel like her silence was an answer and she thought I’m a narcissist….but didn’t want to say it. That thought broke me. How could I try so hard to be a good partner, to work on myself, and still be seen as a monster?
I already spoke with a therapist in the spring 2024 about being called a narcissist, after Cris wrote that letter outlining her reasons. They reassured me: the fact I was openly examining my failures as a partner and wanting to change was the opposite of narcissism. They assured me sharing past traumatic experiences is good and healthy in relationships. They said that Cris making that about maniupulation points more to her own internal issues and struggles. But because Cris never brought closure or apologized for that accusation, the doubt lingered and often entered my mind.
Eventually, later that afternoon, she told me on the phone, “No, I don’t think you are.” But it came out hesitant, like she didn’t really believe what she was saying. By then, the damage was already done. Avoiding a clear yes or no all day had planted the seed that she really did think I was one….and nothing could shake it.
I know I wasn’t a victim of her. My struggle was my own. Still, I can’t ignore that in that moment, she could see me suffering and chose not to step in when it would have taken zero effort, mentally and emotionally. What felt like deliberate disregard for my well-being hurt way more than the negative spiral itself. It was cruel and unnecessary.
The idea that this was deliberate grew after I asked her to apologize. Her response:
“You don’t get to demand apologies”
I made it clear that I was very hurt by this entire situation.
She didn’t apologize and seemed not very sorry that her response was hurtful
Was she responsible for how I felt before asking her that question the first time? Not at all. Could she see I was struggling? Absolutely. Did she understand that she could help with minimal effort? For sure she did….but she chose not to.
The Bigger Pattern
That moment wasn’t isolated but it reinforced something I’d already started to feel: That it wasn’t emotionally safe to share with her everything that was happening inside my head. At least not until she listens to me about the hurtful things she is doing. But she was too focused on MY wrongdoings to admit or work on hers.
When I tried to express hurt or confusion any other time, I often felt dismissed or blocked out/shut down. Like the time she told me, “People in Colombia don’t have mental health problems. They don’t have the time. They have bigger problems.”
That line repeated in my head for months. It made me wonder if she just didn’t have space for my emotional world. I found myself defending her lack of understanding. “It’s cultural. She hasn’t had a boyfriend or close friend like this before. Cris is dealing with her own struggles etc.”
I started to see that her empathy was limited — that it was conditional, based on convenience or difficulty.
This experience changed how I showed up in the relationship. I really started to hold things back. I was afraid I’d be seen as love bombing or being too intense. I was scared to say how I felt and then she thinks I’m trying to “be a victim” or looking for sympathy. I was petrified that my obsession with trying to clean up my life and simplify things, so I could service my relationship and have Cris live with me in Hamilton, was perceived as a form of narcissistic control. How fucked up and irrational is that, for me to think that trying to show love, lead, care and provide will reinforce Cris’s view of me being a narcissist?
I eventually stopped expressing hopes and ideas for future plans together, like talking about getting married or bringing her mother to live closer to us or how this garage/apartment project can change our future together. I was even worried to tell her about the matching motorcycles I was working on for an engagement gift. Most importantly, I was worried to say how the thing I wanted most was to simply wake up beside her every day and ask “what do you need to make today easier for you? What can I do to make tomorrow and the future better for you/us”?
All I wanted was to live close. I knew half our problems would be solved by living closer or together and the other half would be much easier to work on.
Even in writing this journal, I catch myself censoring. Afraid to sound like I’m deflecting from my own faults by pointing to hers. But bottling it up left me carrying all the blame alone. Therapy helped me see that wasn’t true — that it was shared. Thankfully, therapy has shown me its equally her fault and helped me express myself in this journal project.
The Breakup and Shutout
On the Saturday morning I broke up with her, I wasn’t asking for much. Just a conversation about where we stood, what was working, and what needed work. These were supposed to be regular conversations but we didn’t make time the last few months to write in our book together.
The night before, when I stopped by after work, she was unexpectedly busy with work and French, so I respected that. I asked if we could talk the next day instead.
When I asked again the next morning, I got fortune-telling accusations of how I will act in the future. “You’re going to be mad for coming, so I don’t want you to come.” When I asked why she thought that, it shifted to “I don’t want to talk to you right now.” Then finally, “I don’t want to talk to you at all.”.
She didn’t. Cris wouldn’t answer. No replies. No reason expressed.
When she wouldn’t answer or reply, the way I reacted via text messages was very wrong and I’ve been trying to take responsibility and make changes in my life to prevent anything like that from happening again, mainly quitting drinking alcohol.
But what also stands out is how familiar the pattern was. This wasn’t the first time she shut me out completely. Sometimes it was for days completely withdrawing. We wrote about this in our book.
I don’t even know if she was overwhelmed that day. Maybe she was drinking with Diana. I just don’t know, because she wouldn’t talk to me. and hasn’t since.
That morning wasn’t an isolated misstep fortune-telling accusations about things I will do in the future. There had been other times in about a 2-3 month period, not to mention our entire relationship: her dance event in November, the basketball game, the Christmas trip, and finally that last morning in January. Each time I tried to brush it off, to say it was fine, to pretend I wasn’t hurt. But the pattern added up. She accused me of something that hasn’t happened….becaause it’s in the future….and it hurt being deliberately excluded from her life.
Eventually, I broke. I’ve since learned that around this same period I was also experiencing ADHD burnout and anxiety attacks — things I didn’t have language for at the time. But even with that context, my reaction was still my responsibility.
My Responsibility + Regret
I know I’m responsible for my actions. The way I reacted — lashing out, saying things to hurt her — was destructive and cruel. I regret it deeply that I was emotionally abusive. I regret the way I broke up with her.
It’s partially my fault for being bad at expressing my extreme emotions (I’m learning and doing much better now, thankfully), but it does not take an emotional genius or active couples therapy to be mindful of someones mental fragility when they keep saying “I am randomly breaking down in tears all the time” and “I don’t know what is wrong but there is something wrong”.
I need to be honest with myself and stop accepting all the blame: two things can be true. I was wrong for how I reacted. And she was also emotionally abusive — in how she withdrew, in how she avoided accountability, and in how she treated me as someone whose emotional needs were an inconvenience.
My attempts to connect, even when I was soft, kind, and calm, were often met with coldness or suspicion. Even attempts to become closer by sharing vulnerable stories were treated like manipulation. Sharing my past pain with my father, or with my ex Brittany, was used against me and accused as me “playing the victim.” It was very clearly included in a hand written letter from Cris. That left wounds of its own.
The Wall That Changed Both Our Futures
I remember the morning and early afternoon of January 25th vividly. Laading up to that day, I was often feeling like I didn’t want to live anymore. That morning was one of them. But the later the day went, the blurrier it gets. I do remember having extremely emotional thoughts about how I could end my life. I had immediate access to all the tools to do it. She didn’t know any of this but I really wanted to give up and not live anymore.
After she shut me out again, I asked myself: “How can someone say they love me and deliberately do something they know will hurt me?”
I couldn’t find a good answer. And Cris wouldn’t answer my calls. That’s when sorrow turned into frustration, and eventually, anger. That’s when I snapped. I said things with the intention of hurting her. I picked apart everything I loved about her, piece by piece, just to try and make her feel what I was feeling.
…and I didn’t want to live anymore.
The way I treated her that day was cruel. It wasn’t me at my core. And it’s something I will always regret.
Looking Forward
If Cris ever reads this, I don’t expect forgiveness. She is too stubborn. I haven’t asked for forgiveness in any of my messages. What I do hope for is understanding. To understand my actions and the context that surrounded them.
For her to understand her contributions to our downfall. For her to undertand my internal struggle and how her actions not only didn’t help, they made things much worse.
She couldn’t have known the full extent of what was going on inside me. I only ever showed her the tip of the iceberg, out of fear. But the dynamic we built — me overreacting, her withdrawing and shutting me out — left us both hurt.
I hope one day she can see how her patterns (shutting down, avoiding hard conversations, withholding empathy, refusing to provide reassurance even in small ways) left me hurt, just the same as my overreactions hurt her.
What I’ve learned is this: love without emotional safety cannot last. Emotional abuse doesn’t only come through harsh words during angry fights; it can come through silence too. For me personally, silence hurts more. I’m left with my own mind and sometimes that’s my worst enemy. And even when I have good intentions to connect deeper, if expressed poorly, I can push the closeness I’m craving even further away.
Final Thought
I’m not writing this to assign all the blame to Cris. I’m trying to reflect, to take responsibility, and to stop bottling up thoughts and emotions I kept from her. Cris was part of and influenced these events and emotions in some capacity.
I’m try to be honest about how things unraveled, inside me as well as our relationship — because of things both of us did.
It’s also been eye opening revisiting things from the lens of having undiagnosed ADHD. I’m not sure how different things would have been if I knew this earlier, by have coping strategies and advocating more for the things I instinctively knew helped me. At least these discoveries have allowed me to give myself some grace and not be so hard on myself anymore.
I needed to write this. And I needed to be honest — not just about my faults and mistakes, but about hers too. Being honest about her faults and actions has helped guide me in my search for lifelong partnership. It’s already helped protect me from getting too involved with people I have dated, so it’s a process worth going through.