The morning light used to feel like a promise, filtering through our bedroom window, painting soft stripes across the duvet. He’d be there, warm and heavy beside me, his breath a gentle rhythm. We had plans. A future. A messy, beautiful, real future together. I thought I knew him, knew us, better than anyone. We shared everything. Or so I thought.
It was a Tuesday. Just a regular Tuesday. I was doing that mindless, domestic dance, tidying up the bathroom before work. He’d gone for his morning run. I grabbed the small trash can, ready to empty it. And that’s when I saw it. Tucked beneath some tissue, almost deliberately hidden.A used menstrual pad.
My breath hitched. It wasn’t mine. I knew my cycle, knew the type of pad I used. This was different. A brand I didn’t recognize, and it was wrapped awkwardly, as if in a hurry. My stomach dropped. Dread, cold and sharp, pierced through the morning calm. I picked it up, my fingers trembling. And then I saw it. Scrawled on the wrapper, in faint, almost erased pencil, two words.
Dwayne Johnson pictured with Emily Blunt on September 1, 2025 in Venice, Italy. | Source: Getty Images
“HELP ME.”
The world tilted. The air left my lungs. My blood ran cold. Help me. Not a name, not a number, just a desperate plea. Here. In our bathroom. In our trash. I stared at the faint writing, trying to make sense of it. Who? How? And why? My mind immediately went to the worst place. Another woman. A secret. A betrayal so profound it felt like a physical blow. My beautiful, trusting relationship, reduced to this horrifying secret.
When he got back, flushed from his run, eyes bright with that innocent morning glow, I felt sick. I just stood there, holding the evidence, my hand shaking so hard the pad almost slipped.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his smile fading as he saw my face.
I held it out to him, not saying a word. Just staring, waiting for an explanation, for a crack in his perfect facade.
He looked at it. His brow furrowed. Confusion, then disbelief, then something like irritation crossed his face. “What is this? What am I looking at?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I managed, my voice a strained whisper. “The pad. And the message. Who is she?”
He took it from me, turning it over in his hands, his expression genuinely baffled. He read the words. His eyes snapped up to mine, wide with what I wanted to believe was shock. “I… I don’t know. Seriously, I have no idea what this is. A prank? Did one of your friends leave it?”
My friends didn’t use our private bathroom for such an intimate, disturbing prank. And certainly not to leave a cry for help. “It’s here. In our home. Don’t lie to me.”
His voice rose, tinged with frustration. “I’m not lying! I swear on everything, I don’t know this. I don’t know her!” He tossed the pad back onto the counter, as if it were contaminated. “What kind of sick thing is this? Are you accusing me of something?”
Dwayne Johnson arrives at the pier ahead of the “The Smashing Machine” photocall during The 82nd Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2025. | Source: Getty Images
His defensiveness felt like confirmation. He’s lying. He has to be. My heart shattered into a million pieces. The man I loved, my rock, my future, was capable of this. I started scrutinizing everything. His phone, when he left it unattended. His schedule. Every innocent text. Every late night. Every time he went to the grocery store alone, I imagined him meeting her. Where was she? Was she in trouble? Was she being held against her will? The “HELP ME” echoed in my head, a constant, terrifying refrain.
Our apartment, once a haven, became a cage of suspicion. Every shadow held a secret. Every quiet moment was filled with unspoken accusations. He became distant, withdrawn, hurt by my relentless questioning. He kept insisting he was innocent, that this was some cruel joke, or that I was imagining things. But how could I imagine a physical object? A desperate plea for help?
I started feeling… off. Tired. Forgetful. I’d walk into a room and forget why. I’d lose chunks of my day, moments blurring into nothing. I’d wake up feeling drained, as if I’d run a marathon in my sleep. I blamed it on the stress. The stress of his betrayal. The stress of the unknown woman. The stress of a life crumbling.
One evening, I found a notebook on my bedside table. My notebook. But inside, there were drawings I didn’t recognize, frantic scribbles. A half-written story, dark and disturbing, with characters I didn’t know. It was in my handwriting, but it didn’t feel like my thoughts. I dismissed it, a strange dream perhaps, an outlet for my subconscious fear. The “other woman” still consumed me.
I decided I couldn’t live with the lie anymore. I was going to leave him. I was going to pack my bags, tell him I knew he was hiding something, and walk away. My heart ached, but the betrayal was too deep. I started going through an old box in the closet, looking for an old photo album, something to remind me of happier times, to give me the strength to say goodbye.
Dwayne Johnson arrives at the pier ahead of the “The Smashing Machine” photocall on September 1, 2025. | Source: Getty Images
At the bottom of the box, beneath layers of forgotten letters and dusty keepsakes, I found it. A worn, spiral-bound journal. My old therapy journal from years ago, when I was dealing with some past trauma. I’d completely forgotten about it. I flipped it open, scanning the pages, feeling a pang of sadness for the person I used to be. And then, I stopped.
A page, dated just a few months prior. My own handwriting. Scrawled across the top, in large, shaky letters: “Episodes are getting worse.” My eyes raced down the page. Details of blackouts. Moments I couldn’t remember. And then, a paragraph that made the blood drain from my face.
“I’m so scared. I’m doing things, writing things, leaving messages for myself. Trying to get my own attention. Trying to find help. I just hope I find them when I’m ‘here’ again. Today I wrote something on a pad wrapper. Something important. It said: HELP ME. I hope the other me sees it.”
My hand flew to my mouth, stifling a gasp. It wasn’t another woman. There was no other woman. The pad. The message. The lost time. The strange drawings. The half-written stories. The feeling of being drained. It all clicked into place with sickening clarity.
I was the other woman.
I was the “her” my boyfriend swore he didn’t know. I was the one leaving messages. The “HELP ME” wasn’t a desperate plea from a stranger. It was a cry from my own fractured mind, from a part of me I didn’t remember, begging for help.
And his denials. His frustration. His insistence that he didn’t know “her.” It wasn’t a lie of infidelity. It was the desperate, heartbreaking truth of a man trying to cope with the reality of my declining mental health, trying to protect me from a truth too terrifying to face. He wasn’t betraying me. He was watching me betray myself, and trying to shield me from the wreckage.
Mark Kerr and Dwayne Johnson attend “The Smashing Machine” red carpet during the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2025, in Venice, Italy. | Source: Getty Images
The morning light still filters through the window. But now it doesn’t feel like a promise. It feels like an interrogation. And the only person I’m afraid of facing is myself.
