Little Ghosts (Should’ve Been Us)… (2-11)

Consent (The Ticket)

This piece lives in the aftermath: cheating, endings, untreated mental health, and the way near-misses (including one clumsy “right-before-graduation” moment) can haunt you for years. It’s not a brag or a how-to—it’s an ethics-and-regret inventory, with kink language only in the context of adult, negotiated dynamics.

If old crushes, broken dynamics, cheating fallout, or “we could’ve been something” memories are tender spots for you, read this only if it feels grounding, not punishing.

It’s okay to skim it, save it, or walk away halfway through if your body starts tightening up more than it opens—especially once it shifts from the “big” breakups into the smaller, stranger hauntings: the almost-people, the almost-dynamics, the unfinished conversations your nervous system still treats like missing chapters.

— Zan

The Scene (The Ride)

I could’ve been anything.

I could’ve stayed with anyone I left.

I could’ve white-knuckled my way through the cheating.

I could’ve swallowed the mental health spirals that never went anywhere near treatment.

I could’ve lived with the carelessness.

I could’ve kept pretending their failure to hold their role was “just a rough patch.”

I could’ve just shut the fuck up and taken it.

I really, truly could have.

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t take the cheating.

I couldn’t stomach the untreated chaos.

I couldn’t live with the carelessness toward my time, my body, my heart, my life.

I couldn’t keep watching someone fumble a role they begged me to give them.

In every dynamic, it eventually stopped being, “Can I fix this?” and became,

“I just can’t fucking take this anymore.” 

Didn’t matter who it was.

Didn’t matter how long we’d been together.

Didn’t matter how much I’d already sunk into the story of us.

Even when I “settled” — and oh, did I settle — I couldn’t stay settled. That’s not how this life molded me. That’s not how my wiring works.

This thing in me — the drive toward structure, devotion, dynamic — was never a phase.

It was my pulse.

The only thing that ever actually held me back from my darkest days was me.

Not “The One.”

Not some soulmate with good branding.

Not “my other half.”

Most of the time, the person I was with was the one who put me on the road to hell in the first place.

So when I say:

I shouldn’t be anything less than who I am now,

that’s not a slogan.

That’s me crawling out of every burning building I once tried to move into.

At least that’s how it was for the lifestyle dynamics I was in — the ghosts of the past…

But what really grinds my gears is the fucking little ghosts.

The almost / never-was people — more cameo than starring role in the viewfinder of my life.

The ones my brain still insists should’ve been an “us,” even though, in reality, we never made it past NPC status in each other’s lives.

The ones who don’t even make the credits, but were just hanging around on set for a day of shooting so they could get a free lunch.

Yeah.

Let’s talk about these little mind goblins.

My attraction to sex — sorry, the opposite sex — really started to bloom right before I hit high school.

I mean, there was always some girl I was crushing on, but in this particular stretch of time there was one in particular — tall, slender, neck-length blonde hair, suspicious bruises on her legs and arms — you know, one of my preferred types.

There were warning labels attached to her by the people orbiting her and who knew her better than I did: train wreck, bad news, dirty cocksucker.

Which, naturally, made my brain go:

Sold. 

I like “kinda fucked-up,” “kinda stupid,” “kinda down-for-whatever” girls.

If you’re keeping score, I should chime in here and state the obvious: my arousal map is still my problem, and it’s not getting much better with age.

I wanted to “be in a relationship” with her, even though I barely knew anything beyond:

  • she lit up something intense inside my my pants,
  • she was objectively a bad idea,
  • and every friend I had at the time was like, “My man. Just… no.”

It was one of those situations where she was the last one to know, because I told everyone else first.

I told them — badly — that I had feelings I couldn’t place, like she was an answer to some question I was too clumsy to even phrase.

I built a whole imaginary “us” in my head long before I ever gave her the chance to disappoint me in real time.

Apparently she’d built an imaginary us too, because when I finally approached her and said something like, “Hey, I’d like to get to know you more, maybe hang out after school sometime,” she smiled and hit me with:

“You’re so sweet. We’re really good friends. We might try to do that sometime.” 

Which was wild, because we had quite literally never spoken beyond that interaction, as far as I could remember.

She friend-zoned me without us even being friends. Like… what the hell is that? Pre-friendzone? Quantum friendzone?

To this day, I half-believe she was just gently gaslighting me to save me from whatever horrors were going on in her life outside of school. At least that’s the version I tell myself — not the one where I was that cringey pre-Dom orbiting her in public, hoping word would get back that I was interested and she’d magically walk up one day like:

“Oh, you want to be in a relationship with me?! That’s so funny, I was thinking the same thing about you but didn’t know how to tell you.” 

Shortly after my little gaslighting encounter, she kind of faded out. She had different classes, and then I think she moved somewhere else — and I never saw or heard from her again.

Except she lives in my head rent-free, forever, along with the others.

“Friend-zone” me? I ghost-zone you.

I have a lot of regrets in life — some completely out of my control and some, I’ll admit, entirely my own doing. But no matter what I’ve achieved or fucked up along the way, there will never be a bigger regret than saying no to a bathroom threesome in the girls’ restroom right before graduation.

Just thinking about it makes me depressed.

Now, before you turn and give me that side-eye, everyone involved was of age — like I said, this was right before graduation.

Now that we’ve got that clear — yes, I know how big of a deal it would’ve been if we’d gotten caught.

Sitting here now as an older man — knowing what I know about myself and how their lives have shaped up — sometimes I don’t give a single shit. If I had that memory in my cap, I’m pretty sure I’d be doing a lot better on my darker days than I have without it.

But that’s the point — and where my ethics, even that far back, were already forming around my inner Dominant and kink wiring. I still had a line.

My concern at the time wasn’t:

“Oh boy, I sure would get in trouble.” 

It was more like:

If we get caught, it’s going to ruin these girls’ lives. I, being a horny male, have the built-in “boys will be boys” bullshit pass that lets guys skate by on almost anything. But they’d be branded sluts. It would hit their mental health, their reputations, their siblings still in school once word spread. And on top of that, it would violate the privacy of any other girl walking into that bathroom. Also, this would probably be the first real “yes” sexual experience for at least one of them. 

So, being the Captain America Dom™ that I apparently am, I declined and walked away while they both went into the girls’ bathroom together.

Probably to piss or shit.

Or they had fun without me.

Which I don’t think happened, but since I wasn’t there — who the fuck knows.

There will be times you’re tested — speaking to you other Doms / Masters / Daddies / Those That Hold Power — with something you REALLY want, but it’s wrapped in conditions that aren’t safe or suitable for everyone involved, or even for the people around the situation.

Our needs, within the bounds of reason, do matter. But they don’t sit above everything else — not if playing it out would break our ethics, cause harm to the people who trust us, or affect those that have nothing to do with our own bullshit.

Sometimes, even when your brain and body are begging you to do something reckless — like write one last, wildly satirical paragraph that would tie this whole thing together and leave jaws on the floor from how shocking and clever it is — you have to walk it back for the greater good.

Not just for the people who might misunderstand it.

Not just for the ones who might get hurt by it.

For your own ass.

Because when you walk in this lifestyle, it’s not some high school bullshit.

We’re dealing in people’s nervous systems.

The thing about little ghosts is they don’t stop after graduation.

If anything, they get weirder as an adult.

When you live in this lifestyle long enough, your life becomes a graveyard of:

  • almost-collared subs,
  • half-negotiated dynamics,
  • people who called you “Sir” once in a DM and then disappeared,
  • conversations that went three layers too deep and then snapped shut like a bear trap.

Some of them are one-message wonders.

A “Hey, I’ve been reading your stuff for years and I think I’m…” followed by three paragraphs of confession and craving — and then poof.

Account deleted.

Name changed.

Back to the ether.

You’re left with this imprint of a nervous system that brushed yours for fifteen minutes on a Tuesday, then vanished.

You don’t get closure.

You don’t get to know if they’re thriving, crashed, married now, or still drafting the same message to someone else.

You just get a new little ghost.

There are the almost-dynamics, too.

The ones where you:

  • vet,
  • talk for weeks,
  • compare histories,
  • lay out rules,
  • feel everything in you going, “This could actually work,”

…only for something to jam in the gears right before you both hit “yes.”

Wrong timing.

Wrong geography.

Wrong relationship status once the truth shakes loose.

Wrong mental health moment for either of you.

From the outside, it looks like nothing happened. 

From the inside, your brain has already run the simulation.

You’ve already done three months’ worth of scenes and repaired six childhood wounds while you were at it.

And then—

Nothing.

You block.

They disappear.

Life intervenes.

No great betrayal. No dramatic breakup.

Just another little ghost pacing the hallway of your nervous system, rattling the chains of:

“We could’ve been something.” 

But: reasons.

So when I talk about little ghosts, I don’t just mean:

“That one girl with bruises,”

or

“those two girls in the bathroom.”

I mean:

  • the almost-subs,
  • the nearly-Doms,
  • the ex-maybes,
  • the mutuals I flirted with exactly once,
  • the strangers I only ever knew by a username and a nervous system flare.

None of them made it to full “us.”

Some of them barely made it past “hello.”

But on the nights when my brain starts running old footage, it’s not always the big breakups that replay first.

It’s the should’ve-been-us moments.

The lives that never actually happened — except in the part of me that still, against my better judgment, believes I could’ve been anything with the right person at the right time.

Those are the ghosts that really linger.

Companion track: “Should’ve Been Us” – Tori Kelly

Aftercare (The Comedown)

If this left you spun up, here’s what you just read: an ethics-and-regret inventory about near-misses — the almosts, the timing, the choices you did and didn’t make — not a love story you’re supposed to reenact or a “go chase them” directive. Those little ghosts are loud because your brain can turn potential into a whole relationship in minutes, and then mourn it like it actually happened. That doesn’t make you dramatic or broken — it means you attach deeply, even to unfinished chapters.

So take the pressure off: you don’t owe closure to a memory, and you don’t owe your present to a past that never fully existed. If this poked old cheating fallout or “should’ve been us” grief, keep your next move small and clean: choose what protects your dignity, not what feeds the spiral. You’re allowed to remember without building an altar — and you’re allowed to let the ghosts stay ghosts while you keep living forward.

Cycle II – Coming of Age (The Hidden Life) · 11 (v1.00)

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