It’s just that—I don’t want to think about you any more. I don’t want to want you so much. I don’t want to be planning fantasy dates in my head, easy, sweet, simple things, and know that even though they are easy and sweet and simple they just can’t, and won’t, happen. I don’t want to be dreaming of all the ways to make you happy, anything, everything, and still, know that it won’t change a single thing. I don’t want to want you by my side and I don’t want you all for myself, I don’t want to care when you fuck other girls.

But I do. I do, and the more I do, and the more pathetic attempts I make at trying to get there, so that you and I, we’ve known each other for long enough, we’ve seen each other enough, so that we better played the part of a happy couple, the more this bitter sting, this explicit reminder that we will never be keeps bouncing back. One of my professors imparted a valuable lesson from an old cognitive therapist from a while back, out of context, but I think I can and should apply it here: just pretend. Pretend you’re a girl who deserves better, who doesn’t settle for good enough (and I do, and I won’t!), pretend you’re a girl who has no trouble making decisions, a girl who is never weak because of a sentimental heart, a girl who doesn’t get so wrapped up in her fantasies that she destroys her petty reality.

Okay. So. So. It’s time to say goodbye. It’s been time to say goodbye. If a friend related my story back to me disguised as someone else’s worry, I’d say, in a second, leave him. You’re more important. You’re worth it (etc.) I deserve better. I do, I do. Even the meaningless things. The romantic things. Why can’t I have that? I just wish you cared a fraction of how much I cared, in the right ways. But you don’t and you won’t and you never have and I need to stop lying to myself. This is better. A step in the right direction. Maybe I need to be properly single again. Maybe every occasion and argument that’s worked against us has been the right ones.

I wonder, I wonder what would happen if I told you that I loved you. But I don’t, because I don’t know what love is, and even if I did I think this probably isn’t it, and anyway you certainly know what love is and you tell me that this isn’t it. You’re right. So I should stop wasting my time and yours. Even if we have a time limit. These next few months won’t magically be better. I’m doing the right thing. I am. I have to be…because whatever fun we do have, all the incredible sex and the endearing little conversations, how much more time do I spend agonizing, paranoid, terrified, inferior, infuriated. You put me in my place. But I don’t want to be constantly reminded—even if you don’t mean it—that I am not good enough. I am. Don’t you see that? I am.

Okay. So. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will ask you to go on a walk and tell you all of this. I will look you in the eye. I will try not to cry. I will tell you the wretched truth about how much I care and pretend not to care. I will walk away and not look back, not break down in front of you. I’m scared. But I’m a girl who makes the right decisions. I can’t keep doing this to myself. It’s not worth it. I will miss you like mad and it will hurt a lot and I probably won’t be able to sleep and cry and cry. But it’s the right thing, don’t you see? inconvenience, for you, I’m sorry, but, I’m a girl who deserves better.

I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing the right thing. Even for a libertine I’m doing the right thing. Wish me luck. Oh, wish me luck, please.