I am my own flawed logic. I am my own reason for sleeping too much when you aren’t around. I exist against my own better judgment. I won’t go outside. I get my own better of me. I am an act of defiance. If I let you go, I’ll be stuck with myself, so now you know.

I wake up in the morning determined to be the worst version of myself. I work on the little things I do right, and I fail at them on purpose. I become a cavity to a world that has been nothing but kind to me. I destroy everything from the inside out. Why the fuck not?

Please swear you’ll never become a better person. I don’t have it in me to change, and I don’t want to lose you if you’re too good for me one day.

You told me it isn’t a game of chicken if you believe in God enough. You walked out into traffic, and I tried to get to you, but the cars all swerved around you, cutting me off. “This is all part of His plan,” you yelled over the sound of traffic and a twisted orchestra of car horns. I knew then it was a mistake to take you to church high. Even before you laid down and a stream of cars washed over you.

I want you to know you are all the best parts of me. Well, ever since I mined you for organs to replace the wreckage that was my insides. I’m so grateful, I’ll be sure to drink to you at your funeral. Now that I can drink again.

Before this date starts, I should warn you that I often go into psychotic fits of murderous rage. It should be fine as long as we avoid my triggers. I don’t have time to list them all, but here are the ones that may be relevant for tonight: food, movies, holding hands, Care Bears, being dumped, and not having sex on first dates. Now what did you have in mind?

Every time a person remembers something, he recreates the memory in his own head, and it just so happens that it leads to memory degradation. Someone who recalls a memory every day has an increasingly less truthful memory than if he remembers that same thing suddenly years down the line, once. I want you to know that so you understand how I am going to willfully remove you from my mind. Every day, I will recall my memories of you and alter them slightly until some day — maybe decades from now — those memories will be so degraded and changed, you won’t be in them at all.

Not quite the heart of Akron — whatever that would be. I sat in a waiting room packed with kids. Some crying over what they were about to do. Some shockingly indifferent. I drove her there to cut our last remaining tie so some day I could never know her again. On the way home, I pulled to the side of 77 South, and she threw up like there was anything in her anymore. She got in the car and said, “I have to call my dad. He will never forgive me.” She was right.

It’s odd but true — my marriage didn’t get good until my wife died. We used to split time between what I liked and what she liked. After her death, though, it was all me time, and she never complained. Instead, she sat quietly with the smile the taxidermist gave her — he even made her smile less gummy than when she was alive. We were always happy all the time.

The problem with you was nobody was as close to perfect as you were on your good days. You were out. You were smiling. You were an irresistible beacon of happiness. So much so that nobody believed me when I would tell them what you did to me on your bad days. You could always charm the blame onto me — your problem kid. But now I’m bigger than you. Now I’m stronger. You can’t charm that out of me, and you’re about to find out what a bad day really is, mom.