She’s breaking up with you today. Don’t let her get away without her making a promise.
“I want you to promise me that in a few years, or maybe ten, or twenty, when you realize that you made a mistake by letting me go, and that this breakup was where the turn downward for you began, that you won’t beat yourself up about it too much. That you’ll try to make the most of the life you ended up with, even though I’m not in it.”
She’ll say she won’t make that promise.
“Please, I won’t be able to live with myself if I know that you’ll one day be unhappy because of this mistake in judgment.”
She’ll say that it’s over, and there’s nothing to make promises about because she’s going to be just fine. She’ll say it’s time for her to go.
“I can’t let you go,” tell her. “Not until you promise me. Isn’t it cruel enough that you’re leaving me? Do you also have to make me worry about how you’ll do harm to yourself when you realize what a mistake you’ve made? I’ll have to spend the rest of my life creeping around your periphery, intervening covertly to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. I have stuff I want to do too. I can’t spend my life making sure you don’t kill yourself because you let me go. Now promise me!”
She’ll sigh and say she promises. She promises not to hurt herself when she realizes she was wrong to let you go.
“And I promise not to spend my life pitying you for the choice you’re making tonight,” tell her.
She’ll shake your hand, then run outside and get into her new boyfriend’s idling Camaro.
“He’s driving her to the land of disappointment and regret,” you’ll say to the empty apartment. It’s empty now. She’s gone. All you can do is let her go and hope she keeps her promise to be good to herself without you.
“It’s hard, trusting them with their own lives like this,” you think, remembering the nineteen other women you forced to make the same vow to you.
Happy Breakup Vow Day!
