A bit of life that’s not fair
When you break up with someone, you can’t be the one to make him or her feel better. Not only is it not your job; if you attempt it, it downright backfires, and makes the person resent you and wish to hurl china at you. I know this because I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve wanted to strangle certain not-quite-former beloveds for being so aw-garsh darn nice to me when they’ve just told me they’d prefer to extricate themselves from my life.

And now here I am. And I don’t just want to absolve myself from the guilt that I feel for ending things. Damn it, I genuinely want to comfort this person. He’s a good person, a kind person; one of the sweetest I have ever met—and even though things did not quite click, the thought of him feeling as awful as he’s told me I’ve made him feel is like a giant metal clamp inside my ribcage. I cannot relax at all till I know he’s okay. But I can’t ask him.

Of course, while I was growing up, this was my parents’ joint refrain whenever I whined about such things: "Life is not fair." And it’s not, although I’d like to work to make it more so. I’d like to find the exact place where my caring ends and explain it to him in terms more exact than "I love you but I’m not in love with you," which feels like a broad-stroked lie because it’s not the absolute truth. The Betty-Crocker just-add-water-and-one-egg version of how things are. Yeah, it tastes good when you just really want some double chocolate and pronto, but I can do so much better with a little work.