People say I ran away. My mother still insists I was taken. But the truth? I chose to stay. For a while.
Six months ago, I vanished without a trace. One minute I was at the farmer’s market buying blood oranges, the next…I was gone. That’s what the security cameras show. I just walk out of frame. No one sees what happened after.
But I do.
I remember stepping through the cracked doorway behind the flower stall. I remember the smell of smoke and pomegranate. And him. The man with the dark eyes who didn’t ask me to follow—but didn’t stop me either.
His name was Adrien. Or at least, that’s what he told me. The name didn’t matter. It was the way he looked at me—like he already knew what I was running from.
With him, time slowed down. Or maybe it stopped altogether. I didn’t eat. Not really. Just pieces of something red and bitter he handed me from his palm. I didn’t ask what it was.
I should have.
The first time I asked to leave, he said, “You already did.” And I didn’t understand what he meant—until now.
Because when I came back, everything was off. My friends talk to me like I’m made of glass. My ex moved in with someone else. My bedroom smells like dust and strangers. Even my reflection looks…older. Harder.
They think I’m lucky to be home. They don’t know I still dream in smoke. That I still feel his fingers on my wrist.
And I haven’t told anyone the worst part yet.
I think I left a piece of myself down there.
And I think he plans to come back for the rest.
The first month back felt like walking through a life I no longer fit into. Everything looked the same, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t.
My mother kept trying to feed me comfort food and ask questions she didn’t really want the answers to. I’d sit at the kitchen table, watching her chop carrots or stir soup, pretending I was still her daughter. Pretending I hadn’t changed.
But I had.
I wasn’t the girl who left. I wasn’t even sure I was someone new. I felt… suspended. Like Adrien had pressed pause on who I was becoming, and now I was stuck somewhere in between.
The strangest part? I missed him.
I hated that I missed him.
Some nights I’d wake up sweating, my sheets twisted, and I’d swear I could smell the firewood he used to burn. I’d close my eyes and almost hear his voice—calm, low, saying my name like a secret only he knew.
“You were never meant to stay long,” he once told me. “But you stayed anyway.”
That’s what scared me the most.
Because I did.
I chose him. I let him pull me under.
And I didn’t fight to leave until it was too late.
I started seeing a therapist three weeks after I got back. My mom begged me to. Her name was Dr. Lanya—older, sharp-eyed, and not the type to sugarcoat. I appreciated that.
“Do you remember where you were?” she asked during our second session.
I paused. Then nodded. “Yes. But I don’t know where it was. It wasn’t…here.”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Were you alone?”
I looked down at my hands. “No.”
It was hard to explain someone like Adrien to someone who lived in the real world. He wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t abusive. He didn’t keep me chained. But he didn’t have to.
He made it so I wanted to stay.
“You know,” Dr. Lanya said slowly, “there’s a story that reminds me of what you’re describing. The myth of Persephone.”
I let out a breathless laugh. “I know. I’ve heard it before.”
She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Then you also know—she always has to return.”
That hit me harder than I expected. Because deep down, I knew I hadn’t left forever.
Adrien never said goodbye.
He said, “See you when the season changes.”
And fall was creeping back in.
I tried to ignore it. I threw myself into my old routines. I got a part-time job at a bookstore in town. I started volunteering at the animal shelter on weekends. I even met someone new—Alec. Quiet, kind eyes. The type who always opens your car door and remembers your favorite kind of tea.
He was everything Adrien wasn’t.
And still, he didn’t feel real.
One evening, Alec and I were walking near the lake when he turned to me and said, “You ever feel like you’re two different people, depending on where you are?”
I stopped walking.
He looked at me gently. “You okay?”
I wanted to lie. But I was so tired of lying.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Just…sometimes I don’t know where I belong anymore.”
He didn’t ask what I meant. He just held my hand a little tighter.
That night, I dreamt of Adrien again.
But this time, it was different.
This time, he was angry.
“You made a promise,” he said, voice like gravel and smoke. “You ate.”
I shot awake, gasping.
It was then I remembered the fruit. The thing he fed me—those small, blood-red seeds. I thought they were nothing. A snack. But they were more.
They were binding.
I googled it later—just to see. “Pomegranate seeds, Persephone, myth.”
Three. Six. In some versions, she ate six seeds. One for each month she had to stay with Hades.
I had eaten four.
Four bitter seeds from Adrien’s hand.
And now fall had arrived.
I didn’t want to believe it was real. But my gut said otherwise. Things around me began to glitch. Lights flickered when I walked past. I’d forget entire conversations. People would call me by the wrong name.
One morning, I woke up to find a single black feather on my pillow.
No windows open. No birds in the house.
Just the feather.
I knew what it meant.
The world I’d stepped into wasn’t done with me yet.
I tried to fight it. I kept myself busy. I told Alec I was just tired lately, nothing serious. But something inside me was pulling. Like a rope tied around my ribs, tugging tighter every day.
Then, one evening, I found the doorway again.
Same market. Same stall. Same crack behind the wall.
But this time, I didn’t go in.
I stared at it. My whole body vibrating with memory.
Adrien stepped out. Just like that. As if he’d never been gone.
“You’re late,” he said simply.
I stood my ground. “I’m not going back.”
He tilted his head, curious. “You already are. Every day. In pieces.”
I wanted to scream. To cry. But I didn’t.
Instead, I asked the question I should’ve asked from the start. “Why me?”
He looked away, and for the first time, he seemed…uncertain.
“Because you saw me,” he said. “People pass that doorway every day. But they never look. You did. You wanted to disappear.”
That hit me like a punch.
Because he was right.
Six months ago, I didn’t vanish by accident. I was running. From a breakup, from family pressure, from the hollow way life felt.
Adrien didn’t pull me under. I jumped.
“I’m not her anymore,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
He nodded once. “Then prove it.”
He turned and disappeared back into the shadows.
The doorway crumbled behind him.
That night, I cried harder than I had in months. Not because I missed him. But because I finally faced the truth.
Adrien was a mirror.
He reflected what I didn’t want to see.
I spent six months in a world that offered escape. But escape isn’t healing. And silence isn’t peace.
That was the last time I saw him.
I told Alec everything. Not all at once. But slowly, honestly. He didn’t run. He didn’t call me crazy. He just listened.
And when I was done, he said, “You came back. That’s what matters.”
Fall passed. Then winter. And I didn’t feel the pull anymore.
Turns out, the only way out wasn’t through another door—it was through truth.
Now, I speak at shelters. I talk to people who’ve left hard places, people trying to rebuild. I tell them: you don’t need a mythical reason to disappear. But you do need one to come back.
And the best one?
Is yourself.
If you’ve ever felt like you were living in two worlds, like you weren’t quite home in your own skin—know this: you’re not broken. You’re just becoming.
Healing isn’t fast. It’s not even linear.
But it’s real. And it’s yours.
