Not staying friends on October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I guess I don’t necessarily have a problem, I just keep running into him on a far-more-than-regular basis.

You see, my ex and I were best friends before we began dating. He wanted me to be his girlfriend … but on my end, I didn’t much care for the idea. I’d had a rough childhood of sexual abuse, and I had a baby at age 15 and gave him up for adoption, and such events finally led me to a life-threatening nervous breakdown, therapy, and the like.

Of course, he knew all of this, being my best friend and all, and he was so supportive of me. So, after receiving truckloads of love letters from the guy while I was on an internship half-way across the country, I decided I definitely wanted to give him a chance when I got back to college.

My first week back, we went out for dinner, and discovered we lived in apartment buildings right next to each other, both on the fourth floor, both facing the courtyard, and thus, we could talk through the windows, him from his kitchen, me from my living room. It wound up being one of those splendid romances that I will remember for the rest of my life. Never before had either of us shared a connection like ours. We knew it. We loved each other, and we didn’t doubt this in the least.

Well, that December I graduated from college, and he still had a year to go. We’d decided I would stay behind and work until he garnered his degree and we could move away together. La di da di da. You know the drill.

On Christmas Eve he told me he didn’t know if he could see me anymore, because the experiences that led me to the aforementioned depression “ate away at his stomach,” and he just didn’t think I was “pure enough,” and whatnot. And to paraphrase, but how did he know I would never be that depressed again someday?

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