It has been nine years since the first time you told me not to get my hopes up, eight since you informed me I was little more than a pleasant diversion and five since you declared yourself single.Memorial Day weekend marks the third anniversary of the last time you told me you weren't In Love with me and a year since you told me I was intruding on your space.

Last month you expressed shock at the sound of betrayal in my email voice; as if I had forgotten everything you told me in the previous paragraph.

In the last fifteen months you took time out of your chronically busy schedule to write me that you're mostly happy and your heart is in the right place. You also wrote me to say you now know love, how to love, how to be loved and that you were the Wonderbra of support. Between last Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day of this year you wrote and told me four times that you remember few good times between us.

You have called only to tell me that you rode your bike on Easter and you got an oil change in October. Each time I tell you I have a job in the new career for which I trained and suffered, you tell me don't mess this one up, too. Ten minutes after I had been given a check for $1100 you tell me to listen to my boss in the third meeting room I built in eighteen months. In response to telling you I stopped drinking you say that means I'll lose weight.

You now call only to tell me to brush my teeth and cut my hair. You email me only to tell me me how much better your life is now that I'm not in it.

I have always known my only role in your life was to be the bridge that kept you above the raging, black current of loneliness.

And now I know that my job is done.