Stop listening to me.

I’d planned to write so much more. I wanted to catalog all the things I regret doing and saying, things I’d do so much differently now if I could. I wanted to explain all the overtures I made to you even after these events, and why I made them. But…

I forced myself to accept that you were gone. My mother’s absence was was much easier for me to accept. My mother wasn’t a daily presence in my life — she and I rarely spoke, after I stopped giving her money. And I’d been adjusting to my mother’s absence for…

Where did you go? Why did you leave me? Clearly, I conflated my grief over my dead mother with my grief over you. These are the questions I should have been asking her, not you. She was my mother, not you. …

A few hours later, you texted me back. OMG! Are you okay? I was awash with relief. There you were, you were okay, everything was okay now. You had gone away for a day, the worst day, but now you were back. Thank god, thank god, I’d been so bewildered…

I was about to berate myself some more. I’m sorry you missed it. I was going to say, I know that this “trauma” your sudden absence caused me was small potatoes, on a grand scale — microscopic, electron-sized potatoes. I wanted to make sure you and everybody else knows that…

Let me tell you the story of what you missed. I got the call with the news of my mother’s sudden death around 11am on a Saturday. I cancelled my plans for that day, then I called the necessary people and broke the news to them, and we cried. …

If it seems backwards to castigate myself for someone else’s hurtful actions, then I’m the 2002 Missy Elliot track “Work It.” Hit nerp nebba frebba nip nit. (NB: Phonetic spelling.) It is natural, however, for the forlorn to ask themself, What did I do wrong? And wouldn’t we love to…

I always used to think of you as one of those trendy new restaurants in Brooklyn that only has, like, six tables, and it’s only open on Tuesdays, so hardly anybody can get in to eat there, but there’s always a crowd on the sidewalk. …

Did you know how much you hated me? Because I was entirely surprised. And impressed — how did you manage to remain so close a friend for so many years? It must have been excruciating. Me, forcing myself on you, demanding intimacy, expecting things, losing my shit. The suffocating pressure…