I just broke up with David. Or rather, I broke up with him, like, three days ago, but he’s just now getting the last of his stuff from my place – mostly just a couple of books and that stupid enamel camping mug he loved, the one with the bear on it – and I should feel… something, right? Like, a proper ache in my chest, that hollow-stomach feeling, the kind of dread you get when you realize you’ve made a HUGE mistake. But I don’t. I feel absolutely nothing but this enormous, expansive sense of RELIEF. And it’s making me absolutely furious, because he’s such a genuinely GOOD person. Like, objectively good. Everyone in town loves David. My mom loves David. Even my cat, who hates everyone, tolerated David. He’s kind, he’s thoughtful, he always remembered my weird coffee order – which, in a town this small, where the barista knows *everyone*, still feels like a personal touch – and he helped me out when my old pickup broke down on the side of that gravel road leading out to Miller’s Pond, not even complaining about the mud or the mosquitoes, just quietly getting under the hood with a flashlight. He’s everything you’re supposed to want in a partner, especially around here where options are… limited, to say the least. It’s not like there’s a whole parade of eligible bachelors knocking down my door. And that’s the part that really gets me. It’s not just the absence of sadness, it’s the ANGER. Like, who am I to feel this way? I’m the one who ended it, I’m the one who said, “This isn’t working,” even though, technically, it *was* working. We had a routine, we had plans, we even talked about maybe getting a place together once his lease was up in the spring, which, honestly, would have been convenient. But the thought of it just made my stomach clench, not in a butterflies-in-love way, but in a oh-god-what-have-I-done way. And I hate myself for it. I hate that I can look at a genuinely good man, someone who would have been a stable, loving partner, and feel… bored? Trapped? I don’t even know what the right word is, but it’s certainly not heartbreak. It’s just this vast, echoing emptiness where the emotion should be, and then, immediately after, this burning, indignant rage that I’m such a messed-up person that I can’t appreciate what’s right in front of me. Like, am I broken? Is something fundamentally wrong with me that I can’t just be content? Everyone’s going to ask, of course. This is a small town, like I said. Mrs. Henderson at the general store already gave me that knowing look today when I picked up milk, the kind that says, “I know David hasn’t been seen coming out of your house lately.” And I’ll have to make something up, won’t I? Some vague nonsense about different paths or growing apart, because I can’t exactly tell them the truth, can I? “Oh, I broke up with David because he was too nice, and I felt nothing, and now I just want to scream into a pillow.” They’d think I was crazy. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I’m just designed to be alone, to push away anything good that comes my way, because this feeling of pure, unadulterated relief, after ending something that was perfectly fine, perfectly… expected… it’s just not normal. And it makes me want to punch a wall, or maybe just drive out to Miller’s Pond myself and sit there until the sun comes up, wondering what the HELL is wrong with me.