Searching for Love and Happiness

I hate him. I hate him with all my heart. I miss him when he is not here and he is almost never here. He doesn’t love me anymore. Maybe he never did.

It is like he wishes to be with someone else. He says he will be here for dinner and then cancel with one word and come much later. He promised me that it would not happen the next time. But then it does happen.

He says he loves me. He says that I am the most important person in his life. He says that I am his angel and that he will shield me from anything bad.

He kisses me, holds me and asks me to believe him. And then his phone rang and he just needed to take this one call and he will be right back but he forgot me.

The last words

Friday was the last time he said “Give me just a second”. The last words from him I heard.

He went into his study and I found the big bag I had made ready with all the most important things. The day before I had put all my money in it too. He will never find me.

I grabbed the bag and walked out the front door of the house. He cannot see that from his study. I walked slowly down the street, passing a sign “For sale” that our neighbour just had put up and a few houses further down I looked shortly at the green house that looked so promising in the sunshine.

I saw a taxi. Lifted my hand. “Take me to the train station, please,” I said. “Going somewhere special, lady, “ the driver asked. “Going to find love and happiness,” I answered and smiled. “That is a wonderful place but can be hard to find,” the driver replied.

At the station, I bought a ticket for the next departing train.

Would he find me? Would he even look? Maybe he would be a little sad but then he would get busy again and not have time and he would soon be happy that I am not there all the time giving him a hard time.

To save money I decided to sleep on a bench under a bridge at the waterside. It was not the most comfortable place but it seems like many people walked by and it gave me a feeling of being safe.

A dog was walking by and came over to say hi. He was sweet and I realized when I saw how hungry he was, that I was hungry too.

At daybreak, I got up and went looking for a diner or cafe or something. Most were closed and I ended up down by the harbour with trucks, forklifts and large men with work clothes on in different colours and company names on the back. They looked at me as I entered the place that I was not sure I would call a diner.

Most men were having coffee and sandwiches. The only other woman there was the older one behind the counter. She looked at me: “What’ll you have, dear.” She looked over my shoulder and shouted: “Hey John, move away, can't you see we have a special guest today? Get a move on.”

I ordered a sandwich and a tea and turned around. The one I assumed was John, was standing up, pulled out the chair and nodded his head to show me the seat was mine.

As soon as I sat down all the men went back to talking again. They left me alone. Within 15 minutes they started to leave and soon I was the only one left beside the older woman.

“So dear, what brings you here?” she shouted from behind the counter.

We talked a little. She was sweet. I told her I was taking the bus in a few hours. She said that was good: “This is no place for one like you. Go out and find your happiness.”

No sea, no river. He would be convinced that I would go to the sea as I often told him I wished we lived by the sea.

I got off the bus and didn’t know what to do. I met a young guy who wanted to know what I was doing in his city. We spoke a little and he invited me to a local cafe. A cup of tea, a small bagel and sitting down made everything feel so much better.

He was sweet. He smiled a lot. He talked even more. He asked me where I was going and when I said, I was not going anywhere, he suggested that I should go nowhere with him. That was so funny.

Gone away

Emilie was gone.

I thought she had gone to the store for some food or candy but when she didn’t return within the hour, I thought she might have gone visiting a friend. When she had been gone for two hours, I wondered if I had done something, but couldn’t recall any wrongdoings on my part.

I decided to sleep on it and we would talk about it in the morning. I called her phone and I even wrote a few lines to her, so she knew I was thinking about her.

Lately, she has become somewhat rebellious. We have talked about it often, but my job does sometimes interrupt and she understood that. It is the money I make that pays the bills.

It started sometime back when we became only the two of us. I felt we did good, we had fun and I would take any chance I would get, to go home just for us to spend time together.

In the morning I looked at the bed. She had not been home at all. That made me a little worried but then again, she knows what she is doing, I am sure of it.

I decided to call work and told them I would be working less and only from home while I would be looking for Emilie so they would know, in case they called, why I might not respond as rapidly as usual.

I called her again. I wrote to her. It was alarming, that she didn’t respond. She would normally respond fast. I looked to see if she had left a note for me. I made calls to her friends, asking if they knew where she was.

During the day I realized she had left and intended to stay away. That was not acceptable, not without her letting me know she was fine and where she would be.

I was convinced she would go to the beach. She always talks about that and about how she one day will want to live at the seaside.

When I got to the city by the sea I drove up and down the streets and realized how difficult it would be to find her by myself. I needed help but had nobody to turn to.

At the harbour, I walked into a cafeteria. I asked if they had seen her but they hadn’t. An old woman came over with the coffee I had asked for and put her hand on my shoulder: “She will be fine. Give her time.”

Sitting at the bar in the hotel and wondering about what I should do. I must have looked at the phone a million times by now. Just a little text message from her would be a lifesaver.

Could she have been abducted? Could there be a crime involved? I was getting more and more worried. I ordered another whiskey to smooth my nerves.

I thought about her smile. How she always could make me laugh. With her, I was always happy. She came into my life like a storm — powerful and very disruptive. Everything had to fit into her needs but somehow it felt natural and good to me. I adapted to this happily.

Nothing could feel better than holding her tight. Sometimes we would fall asleep on the couch while I held her close. Her love was the purest, I have ever experienced.

When I would come home from work she would jump in my arms and tell me how she had missed me.

New friend

His name was Terry. We had so much fun while he was showing me around the city. I slept on his couch. His place was not especially clean but I cleaned up enough to make room for me to sleep.

We explored the city. Walked the park. Looked at the statue in front of the city hall. Walked by the bus station, the cinema, the school — walking the streets.

He bought me lunch at Cluck where we sat at a very long table that was shared between all guests. “You can always go here, they are open from 5 a.m. until 2 a.m. — and there are always people here,” he said with his warm smile.

Terry and I bought some food that only needed to be heated and he suggested that we would watch a movie. Just chill out.

He found a movie. It was about this girl that fell in love with an older guy. I had never seen a movie where people would be naked, but Terry said it was just like in the real world, that the movie was more authentic that way.

He asked if I wanted to smoke with him. I told him I had never had a cigarette in my life. “Silly,” he laughed, “Not that kind of smoke. The good stuff.” I didn’t know what it was, but he told me it would make me relax and feel good.

It did make me feel very relaxed. That was when he kissed me.

Seriously worried

She had now been gone for days. This was not good. Not good at all.

One part of me said she would be in big trouble when she would be back. The other part was worried she was in real trouble and needed to be found.

I visited the police station.

I was asked all kinds of questions. “What is her name?” “When was the last time you saw her?” “Why did she leave? Did you have an argument?”

It felt like a million questions and we just sat there wasting our time, when we should be out there looking for her.

“Why do you think she left?” “What did you do?” “Have you ever hit her?”

I was going crazy. It felt like they thought I might have done something. I regretted going to the police. I needed to be out looking for Emilie.

When I tried to leave, I was told I was not free to leave.

The devil pops in

I woke up feeling everything was changed.

Terry told me last night that he loved me. He told me that we needed to stick together and help each other. He would protect me against everything and I would be his angel.

Together we could do anything and everything. Him and me against all the rest. He kissed me and told me that now we were a couple and couples do certain things together.

He undressed me and told me to dance for him. Terry said I did it wrong. Terry beat me and told me that I belonged to him now. That I had to do whatever he told me to do. “End of story,” as he put it.

First, he would teach me how to make money. We needed money to have the life we wanted, he said.

Feeling the guilt

I knew I hadn’t done anything, but when you are asked: “What did you do to her?” over and over again, you start to think that maybe there was something.

At least the police told me they were looking for her. Maybe they would find her. Just as long as they would find her, that was all that mattered. I was later told that her picture had been distributed to all the police cars.

What I didn’t know was that none of us were looking at the correct places.

Prison

All I wanted was to feel loved and appreciated.

I thought about the warm house. The alarm that made the house safe. My bed and the smell of cleanness. The warm shower. I thought about his arms around me and telling me, he would always protect me. I missed him. Why did I leave? Why did I not see what I had?

Terry told me if I even as much as thought about leaving, he would beat me. I was so scared. And what if I would find a way back home? Could he ever forgive me for what I had done? What I have become?

Praying

I am not a strong believer in God. I am not that religious. But I was praying for her safe return. I wanted her to be safe; she would let me know if she was safe.

When the police finally released me we had lost days. I felt more and more sure, that she would have called me by now if she was able to.

Was she dead? Was she captured? Was she hurt?

I drove from town to town and looked everywhere. I didn’t find her. I asked everyone I could get close to. I had a picture taped to the window of my car that showed my last picture of her.

I spoke with journalists. I tried to make them interested and some newspapers started to write about her. A TV station called me.

Freedom

I was walking home one day when I went past a newsstand. On the front page of two different papers where a picture of me as I looked a few days before I left my old home.

When I saw that I started to cry.

The man came out from behind the newspapers and magazines and asked me if I was okay. He asked what was wrong.

I just cried. Terry came running and started shouting at the man and told him to keep away from me.

That was when I saw the police car. The two policemen were walking towards us.

We all have a story to tell and sometimes we run into some bad experiences that we could not foreseen. Life is what we do to get out of those experiences and how we deal with those memories after.

In this “it is not a series” I have written some other stories about people on the same street. If you enjoyed this, you might find them interesting too — click on this list, where you can find them in the correct order:

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This story is fictional. I have not used AI in the making of this.