Elvis and Me

by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley

He always avoided problems. If I was disturbed or depressed, or if I felt we were becoming distant and wanted to get closer by talking it out, he avoided me or told me my timing was bad. There was never a good time.

I was always concerned about his intake of sleeping pills. His horror of insomnia, compounded with a family history of compulsive worrying, caused him to down three or four Placidyls, Seconals, Quaaludes, or Tuinals almost every night—and often it was a combination of all four. When I expressed my concern, he just picked up the medical dictionary, always near at hand on his night table.

There’s an old Southern belief that holds that a woman goes into a marriage thinking she can change her man, while a man wants his woman to stay the same as when he married her. I didn’t want to change Elvis, but I did have the romantic delusion that once we were married, I could change our life-style.

The man in my hospital room that day was the man I loved, and will always love. He didn’t have to try to be strong and decisive or sexy, he wasn’t afraid to show his warmth or vulnerability. He didn’t have to act the part of Elvis Presley, superstar. He was just a man, my husband.

“It’s not that you’ve lost me to another man, you’ve lost me to a life of my own. I’m finding myself for the first time.”