1. I didn’t mean that Erin didn’t love me, or that I didn’t love her, or that we didn’t have love together.

2. I didn’t mean she was ever dishonest.

3. I didn’t mean she was anything less than a perfect girlfriend.

I have emails from Erin that she wrote to me when I was feeling like a depressed, hacky pretentious baby, that should be framed in the Smithsonian as examples of unconditional love and support.  She kept me getting out of bed every day, she kept me out of a bottle, she kept me connected to people, she kept my cartoonish and unjustified outrage grounded, often by asking simple questions like, “I don’t know, are you sure that parking meter is stealing your humanity?  Are you sure it doesn’t just want a quarter?”  She made me a human being.  She made me accessible, she made me the person that you don’t hate and she made me the person that kind of didn’t hate himself.  If I could have a girl like Erin, after, all, how bad could I possibly be.

Okay, so, here’s the problem with being that fair in my journalism.  It makes the obvious question “why did you break up with her” and I don’t want that question being asked of me 6,000 times a day.  It prolongs all the pain and torture.  We’re not getting back together, so where is the therapy and the where is the comfort in talking about how good it was to be with her.

I also don’t want to talk about our relationship in general.  It invades something we owned together, it’s half owned by her, I’m not allowed to just say “this is how it was.”  What I really need to do is express my hatred of myself and my solitude.  I need to atone with my loneliness and make it my best friend because I am not going to be with anybody in any foreseeable future, and if I ever am, it’s because I was weak and I made a big, dangerous mistake out of weakness.  I am a fucked up guy that just needs to be fucked up and learn to live with being fucked up.

Erin “responded” to my blog entry, in which I said love doesn’t exist and that I hated being in a relationship.  She responded understandably.  Justifiably.  I didn’t want her to read it.  It wasn’t for her.  It was for me.  I’m salting the wound, I’m lying, I’m twisting to make myself feel better, all correct.  Her appraisal of my blog entry is all correct, although I didn’t read every word because I don’t want this to become discourse.  It’s not a divorce.  It’s a breakup.  I want to be alone and I also want to be incapable of being alone and write wounded bird blogs in which I pat myself on the back for being all Neil Diamond about shattering someone’s entire life down the middle.

It’s my right to lie to myself, but not about her.  I crossed a line, I guess.  I never meant to imply she was a bad girlfriend.  They don’t come any better, they never will.  That’s a lot less satisfying to blog.  For me.  I’d rather be punk rock about it.  For me.  Erin, I’m sorry, world, I’m sorry.  I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person, I’m a bad person.  If we can all just agree on that, there won’t be any more need for clarification or retractions.  I’m a bad person.  I’m bad for saying I’m a bad person.  I’m bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.  I don’t secretly think I’m good.  I don’t want to be told I’m good.  I’m a bad person.  And now I’m honest.  And boring.  And sad.  And going back to work.