I come home from a long day at work and find his note sitting on the table in my kitchen.

I stare at it first, frozen in my own doorway. I know what it says without reading it. In my mom’s day, they would have called it a ‘Dear John’ letter, an old fashioned, handwritten letter that a woman would write when she broke up with her man. Only this is backwards—a reverse Dear John. Nice move, Joel. Only you.

I take his letter off of the table, holding it gently as though it were an heirloom. I’m not sure why I’m treating it that way, but I feel like I’m holding onto Joel. I know that makes no sense. I was the one who pushed him away—pushed him to the point where he had to sit down with a pen and paper and compose a god damn letter to say goodbye to me. I think about how difficult that must have been and I hate myself. I should have had the balls to just tell him that I was unhappy and that I wanted—no, needed—out of this thing we had. But I couldn’t. I took the coward’s way out because it was easy, and now I’m standing in my apartment, alone, about to read his letter.

Talia,

I never call you by your full name because you hate it, but that’s not why I’m doing it now. I’m doing it because writing a note like this seems like a formal thing. I’m not angry anymore, even though I realize now I’ve been angry at you for a while. You said it a thousand times and I just couldn’t hear you—and that’s on me. But I heard you loud and clear last night, maybe for the first time, and I hope you meant it when you said you supported whatever I chose to do. Well, this is it. This is my choice. I’m moving on, and I think deep down somewhere that you’re happy about that. I don’t know why. I guess I’ll never know why because I’m still old fashioned, I guess. I grew up thinking that you have to do something wrong to get broken up with, but I guess that isn’t so. And, to be clear, even though it doesn’t really matter, it is you who broke up with me. I’m just the one making it official.

I’m going to keep this short, because we’ve gone on long enough in our little fucked-up limbo, and I don’t think it’s good for either of us anymore, if it ever was to begin with. I’m going to come by Thursday for my stuff. I’ll text you the time. Maybe you can get coffee for an hour or two. Why make this harder than it needs to be?

I still love you, and I think that you used to love me, even though you’ve never said it to me. I’m not so sure of any of that anymore, but it doesn’t matter. I hope you get the help you need for your depression, and I just generally wish you the best. I know it sounds like I’m signing your yearbook or something dumb, but I’m already rambling. The end of this letter is the end of us, and maybe I’m not as ready to let go as I thought I was. Anyhow, goodbye, Lia.

—Joel

I stand there and read his words three times, and each time that my eyes scan over his perfect penmanship, I have three distinct feelings. My first feeling is relief. The relief I felt when my parents finally put Mickey down. My second is guilt. The guilt that comes with knowing that I singlehandedly caused another human being so much pain.

My third feeling is indifference.

I guess that last one says it all. There are two parts of this that really catch my attention that I end up reading a few times. The first is the part about me not telling him that I love him. I have no defense on that one, because I know it’s a strange thing—but I’ve never told a guy I was dating that I loved him. Never. Even when I’ve felt love towards them I’ve never said it, not even when they’ve said it to me. That sounds awful, I know, but I have a lot of trouble expressing those kinds of feelings. Joel would always say it to me and then just look at me, waiting for me to say it back. I think we were doomed from the start because of it. How can you fully love someone who won’t tell you she feels the same way?

The second thing that catches my attention is the line about my depression. I hope you get the help you need. Its sentiment reads like a mixture of resentment and pity, sprinkled with just a little bit of love to make it palatable. My depression. It’s been the defining characteristic of my personality since I was fourteen, when I had my first bout with it. If you tell someone you’re depressed, they’ll most likely think that you’re just really sad. What they don’t see is the self-hatred. The lack of motivation to do almost anything. The complete absence of any feelings that aren’t bad ones. How you slowly lose yourself into an endless abyss of nothingness.

My phone rings as I’m reading, and it startles me. It’s Abby. I could set my watch to her calls.

“Hey,” I answer. “What’s going on?”

“I’m taking you out,” she says abruptly. “I don’t care if you enjoy yourself or not. Do it for me. I’ll explain to Joel if you need me to. I’ll tell him it’s a best friend emergency.”

“First of all, hello.”

“Oh, sorry,” she says. “I always forget that part. Hi!”

“Hi,” I say. “And about Joel.”

“What about him?” she asks.

“He’s gone. We’re done.” I say it bluntly because there’s no need to beat around the bush. I don’t give any details except to say that he’s gone. Abby won’t care, she was never a fan of Joel. She’ll probably be thrilled.

“Oh, shit, are you alright? I mean, about the breakup?”

“I’m okay.” It’s my standard line, even though I’ve been pretty far from okay for a while now. Sometimes getting better for a short time is worse—like going into an air-conditioned room in summer, only to walk out into the disgusting humidity ten minutes later. The relief is nice enough, but it makes the status quo seem even worse than it is. “He left me a note.”

“A note? Like a Dear John letter?”

See. It isn’t just me. “Something like that, but in reverse. I can tell he took some time to write it. I feel bad.”

“So that was it? A note? No phone call, or face to face conversation?”

“Nope,” I answer, wanting to be done with this line of questioning. “Just a note. More like a short letter, actually.”

“Coward.”

“Look, it’s over. It is what it is, right? I pushed him away and he resisted for as long as he could. What does it matter how we ended? He’s not a coward, Abby, you don’t have to demean him for my benefit.”

“Alright,” she agrees. “As long as you’re okay.”

“I told you I am. As okay as I get, anyhow.”

This is Abby 101. She’s the ultimate best friend—dependable, caring, always worrying about me as much as she worries about herself, maybe even more sometimes. I thank God for having her in my life. My parents are in my life, but we don’t have a good relationship. They never knew how to handle my depression, so now we have a one phone call per week kind of relationship. Hi Talia, how are things? Good, thanks, how are you and Dad? That’s good. And so on. My sister, Carla, is married and working on her own family now, but we’re way closer than I am with my parents. She’s two years older, so we’re close enough in age that I could always tell her things that I could never tell my parents. Mostly about guys. Then later about my spells. The two were intimately related.

“Let me take you out tonight.”

Fuck. I knew this was coming but I didn’t get out in front of it with a good excuse. Abby likes to escape the monotony of her job by going out on Friday nights. She works in an office, uptown in the city, and every Friday evening, like clockwork, I can set my watch to her call or text about going out. Usually I don’t feel like it, and for the past year I’ve had Joel as my built-in excuse, but that’s all over now.

“I don’t know, Abby. I really don’t feel like bars or clubs, or any of that.”

“Who said anything about bars or clubs? We’re not going to a bar. And you know as well as anyone that I can’t dance for shit, so the club is definitely out.”

“That’s true,” I say. “You can’t dance, but who am I to judge? What did you have in mind then?”

“Books.”

“Huh?” I ask, puzzled.

“I want books. I made a New Year’s resolution to read more books, and I want to go to the bookstore.”

Her idea is weird, but so is she. It’s one of the many qualities I love about her. And I love books as much as anything in the world. Books are the one thing that get me out of my own head and into other people’s. I’m down for a trip to the store. “Sure,” I say without protest. I know she’s expecting me to fight her and make up a million excuses, but I give in to save both of us the time.

“What?”

“I said yes. Let’s go to the bookstore.”

“Wow. I was expecting to have to convince you.”

“I know you were,” I tell her. I’m picturing her smile in some kind of best friend victory on the other end of the line. “But can I tell you a secret, Abby?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s hard to convince me to do anything I don’t want to do.”