Sometimes They Come Back (An ode to Stephen King… and my ex-boyfriend)
by Dr. Pru Lee (Pru Pru)
I grew up on Stephen King—hell, he’s still my favorite author.
He taught me early that monsters don’t always live under the bed.
Sometimes they drive pickup trucks, quote Bible verses, and tell you you’re “too emotional.”
And in true King fashion, they never stay gone.
They claw their way back at midnight, texting from a dark place called “I just realized you were the only one who loved me right.”
This story?
It’s about one of those.
You know the type.
They rise from the dead and suddenly remember you.
Not as the prettiest.
Not the richest.
But the one with the best damn heart.
They always do, don’t they?
Just when you’ve exhaled the last trace of their chaos,
when your peace finally stretches out without flinching at 1AM texts…
there they are.
Rising like bad credit and worse decisions.
This one came with a brand new baby mama,
a restraining order,
and a sudden revelation that I was “the one who got away.”
(Imagine that.)
Said he never should’ve let me go.
And honestly? He’s right.
But that don’t mean I’m comin’ back.
Because I’m not a reboot.
I don’t play sequels with men who handed me the script for a horror flick
and asked me to direct my own damn trauma.
This ain’t love rekindling.
This is ego reaching back to a place that used to be warm, hoping it still burns for him.
It doesn’t.
I already lit the funeral pyre a year ago and called it growth.
Now he’s circling back like men do when life humbles them—but not enough to make them change, just enough to make them regret who they lost.
Once I’m done, I’m done.
Not mad.
Not bitter.
Just spiritually unavailable.
I wish you peace.
I wish you healing.
I wish you far, far away from my inbox.
Some love stories end in fire.
Mine ended in silence.
And here’s the thing they never tell you:
In the moment, the pain of love lost—
especially love that looked promising but tarnished on arrival,
love wrapped in drama, dipped in lies—
can hollow you out.
It feels like loneliness, like abandonment, like failure.
But that loneliness?
It’s a blessing in disguise.
If you stop and decide to see it as solace instead,
if you claim it as sacred ground,
as space to fall in love with the only person who truly knows you—
yourself—
then you come away from that pain transformed.
Not broken.
Not bitter.
But reborn.
That is metamorphosis Love.
Here’s a little benediction for love not realized as true.
Here’s a little spell to turn a ghost story into gospel:
✨ A Spell for a Lover Lost:
May peace sit beside you where I used to lie.
May the echo of my laughter remind you of light.
Wrap yourself in the warmth of our memories—
not to stay stuck in them,
but to let them plant something good in you.
Let it be a seed.
Let it grow you.
Grow into the kind of man
who can recognize a good woman when she’s standing right in front of him—
not after she’s gone.
Grow into a man
who chooses healing over hiding,
truth over ego,
us over me,
and forever over now.
Because here’s the pattern I’ve seen, love:
Men stay selfish.
They move through the world with a mirror instead of a window.
They see everything through a myopic lens of me and now—
until the day they finally learn to see us and forever.
Until then…
you are destined to crawl back
again and again,
only to find
what was once in full bloom
has died.
Because sometimes they come back.
But by then…
it’s already too late.
By then…
it’s all just hauntings.
—Pru