Death by Arrows
It was a Sunday morning disco party. The kind of place where people get loose, a little sweaty, and unmasked. Volume up, bodies moving with that wonderful mix of joy and vulnerability you only witness on a dance floor.
I’d told her about it months earlier. She called to say she was running late, as usual, and casually mentioned her neck was hurting. A few weeks before, I’d been massaging that same neck after a run, the two of us pretending we were just friends. A few months before that, I was kissing it.
I started dancing. And then I saw him. Tall, good-looking, easy confidence. I didn’t know him, but I just knew. She’d mentioned a new crush in passing, and something in the way he moved through the room clicked. This was him. I felt it before I could explain it.
That was the first arrow.
Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.
She arrived a few minutes later, came straight up, hugged me, introduced me to her friends. Long shiny turquoise skirt, signature Adidas, black crop top. Effortless. I loved the look. She knew that. Whether she was doing it for me, for herself, or for no one at all didn’t matter. I was already inside the story.
The next hour was brutal. Not because of anything she did, but because of what was happening inside me. Every part of my attention was locked onto her: where she was, who she was talking to, whether she glanced over, whether she laughed. The dance floor, usually a place where I feel free, became a kind of prison.
Towards the end, we sat on a sofa at the front of the venue. And of course, he came over. She introduced us. He was a good guy. Easy to talk to. Kind, even. Fuck. There was nothing I could find wrong with him.
Which only made it worse. Because there was no one to point a finger at.
And that’s when it hit. This wasn’t about her, or him. This was about what I was doing to myself. The story was running unchecked, and I was believing every ounce of it.
What about me? I’m right here. Don’t you see me!?
That was the second arrow. Not what was happening, but what I was making it mean.
Most of the time, I treat the story as if it were the truth, collapsing the arrows together. The pain I couldn’t help; that’s just being alive. But the untrained person (that’d be me) fires the second: anger, blame, catastrophising, shame. All self-inflicted.
The Fake Trial
The disco was over. She’d gone home. And yet there I was, still on the dance floor in my head, replaying how she moved, how he walked over, scoring every detail for evidence. Evidence of what? What did I do wrong? Why didn’t I see this coming? Was any of this even real? A fake trial that only I would attend.
This is what makes the second arrow so insidious: it disguises itself as thinking. As processing. As doing “the work.” It says, if I just go over this one more time, something will resolve. It rarely does. The first arrow is a fleeting moment. The second arrow is a pet project.
Cutting the Cord
At some point, I said it out loud. I told her I couldn’t see her anymore, that this wasn’t good for me. She understood. We went for coffee. She pointed out another good-looking guy, completely innocently, and I felt the reaction spike again. Same pattern, same story, same pull.
I drove her back to her car. She got in. Then she got out and came over to give me a long hug. Wished me an early happy birthday. Later, she sent a message so sweet it almost undid the whole decision.
And that was it. I cut the cord.
Before I Go
We’ve all got fake problems we’re convinced need solving. Conversations replayed at 4 am. Messages drafted and never sent. A detailed scoreboard of evidence, long after the verdict stopped mattering.
So: where are you still firing the second arrow? What would you set down if you trusted the first one had already been shot and fully felt?
I write to catch myself in the act. To think about my thinking and feel what I couldn’t before. Maybe that’s the whole practice. Not stopping the arrows, but noticing the hand on the bow.
“The cure for the pain is in the pain.” — Rumi
Know someone caught in their own second arrow? Send this their way.
P.S. Catching your own second arrow is hard to do alone. Believe me, I still shoot mine. Sitting with people through these moments, and the transitions they belong to, is the work I do. If that's where you are right now, just hit reply. My door’s open: jonasaltman.com