Man, let me tell you about this one. This isn’t just some feel-good post about thinking positive. This is about being completely flattened, picking yourself up, and doing something totally drastic that works, but maybe not the way you expected.
I was in a hole, alright? Not the metaphorical kind. She walked out, simple as that. Took the cat, half the furniture, and every last bit of my sanity with her. That split wasn’t a clean break; it was a detonation. I spent three months drowning my sorrows, ignoring phone calls, and basically just watching my life flush down the drain. I couldn’t focus on work. I missed deadlines. The bank started calling. I lost my biggest contract because I literally couldn’t pretend to be a functioning adult anymore. I was sleeping four hours a night and eating takeout that tasted like cardboard. I hit that rock bottom where you stop thinking about “moving on” and start thinking about just making the constant, gnawing pain stop. I tried to reach out. I begged. I sent long, embarrassing texts. She just blocked me on everything. Nothing got through. Zero contact. That’s when the switch flipped. I wasn’t just sad anymore; I was pissed, and desperate enough to try anything that wasn’t therapy or booze.
The Way In: Finding the Script
I figured I needed a hard reset, not just for my head, but for the situation. One night, I was tearing apart the garage looking for some old tools to sell—had to start selling something—and I ripped open this old, forgotten hiking backpack. Inside, jammed in a side pocket, was a folded-up piece of napkin. It was covered in my uncle’s messy handwriting from years ago. Uncle Jerry was a weird one, always into obscure stuff, crystals, and all that noise. I nearly tossed it, but the words “Lovers Must” caught my eye. It was a step-by-step, messy, rambling list of instructions he’d apparently written down from some old dude he met in New Orleans. It wasn’t a love spell. It was a “Reconciliation Binding.” The idea wasn’t to force love, but to force a conversation—to pull the two threads back into the same room so the mess could be cleaned up, whatever the final result was. That was exactly what I needed: a forced, unavoidable cleanup.
The list was specific, almost ridiculous. I had to gather this stuff:
- A silver coin (any denomination, but it had to be silver).
- A piece of wood that had been wet in the rain for at least one full day.
- A white candle I’d never lit before.
- Something that represented the “old connection” (I grabbed the cheap, beat-up corkscrew she always used).
The instructions were blunt: “Gather the parts. No substitutions. Do it by the water.”
The Practice: Action and Focus
The next afternoon, I felt like a massive idiot, but I went through the motions. I grabbed the soaking-wet piece of old fencing wood from the yard, the candle, the silver quarter, and the corkscrew. I drove down to the river—the shadiest, most rundown boat ramp I could find, which felt appropriate. The light was fading. I felt completely ridiculous, but I was committed. I told myself: You are doing this. You are forcing the issue.
The first step was to carve a symbol into the wet wood. The napkin had a rough sketch—a circle sliced in half, then stitched together with a lightning bolt. I didn’t have a proper knife, so I used the head of the corkscrew to scratch it deep into the wood until my fingers hurt. It was rough, ugly, and imperfect. That felt right.
Then I had to melt the candle wax directly onto the symbol. I lit the candle, shielding it from the river breeze, and I watched the wax drip and pool over the rough carving. As the wax was still soft, I had to press the silver coin firmly onto the symbol, embedding it right into the wax. I held it there, really pushing down hard, making sure it stuck.
The final stage was the hardest. The note said you had to ‘bind the memory’. I took the corkscrew—her corkscrew—and held it in one hand. With the other hand, I took the wax-covered piece of wood, which was now heavy and sticky. The instruction was to speak “The Closing Line” (a single, rambling sentence about unfinished business) directly into the water, and then immediately bury the corkscrew and the wood near the river. I felt a huge wave of relief just from saying that stupid sentence. I buried them both under a few handfuls of sand and gravel right next to the water line, just enough so they’d get wet again the next time the tide came in. I didn’t look back. I just drove home.
The Result: Not What I Asked For, Exactly
For a week, nothing. I figured I’d wasted two hours and a perfectly good quarter. I got back into my routine, still hurting, but I felt this weird, quiet sense of finality. I’d done everything I could. I stopped checking her last known-actives on social media. I actually slept a full six hours one night. The binding wasn’t about her anymore; it was about me finally acting instead of just reacting.
Then, last Friday, it happened. The phone rang. It wasn’t her. It was her brother. He hadn’t talked to me in months. He called me up completely out of the blue, rambling about how his sister—my ex—was back in town, crashing at his place, and she was in a real bad spot. She’d lost her job, totaled her car, and was basically broken. He asked if I knew the contact number for a cheaper mechanic in our old neighborhood.
I didn’t get my lover back. Not a chance. But that forced “reconciliation” absolutely pulled us back into the same orbit. I called the mechanic, not her. I sent the contact info to her brother. The next day, she actually called me—her voice was totally different, worn out. We met up not for a date, but just in a coffee shop to talk business. We spent an hour cleaning up all the financial garbage, the shared debts, the stuff that was still binding us in a toxic way. We agreed to a real, proper, civilized divorce and to stop pretending the other person didn’t exist. The pain didn’t vanish, but the mess did. The binding worked—it made us confront the unfinished business, not restart the romance. That’s the real lesson: you gotta be super specific about what you need, because the universe listens to the action, not the begging.
