No 1: I EAT SALADS NOW

PHOTO BY FAYE RAAD

REBECCA KOPELMAN

I’ve been going through the motions of wellness, lately–I bathe, I exercise, and I go to sleep at a reasonable hour each night (assisted by NyQuil, but it’s the nine o’clock bedtime that counts). It’s a paradoxical sort of wellness, really. More than anything, I am preparing myself to die beautifully. 

Suicide has been at the top of my mind recently. Not because of you, but because without you, I’ve realized how little I care for my own company. So I embalm myself prematurely–I want to be adored and attractive and missed once I die my muddy death; to be thin and loveable–far too young to die. To waste away would be so cruel.

All this to say, I saw you on my run yesterday. You seemed really well, from what I could tell. Better than I was, at least. There I was, aching all over, wincing in my morbid endeavor, engaging in my ritual of indirect self-harm (I was on my way to meet the man I was sleeping with before you, who’d once slapped me across the face after kissing my forehead like I was a child), and you seemed fine. 

I won’t begrudge you happiness, because I tell myself I want that for you, but god, I wish you thought of me the way I think of you. In a terrible, selfish way, I want you to suffer as I do, to float from blackout weekend to weekend, crying wetly and cruising for somebody to fill you with drinks and take you home; somebody who grabs you by the hair and makes you look him in the eyes and tell him you’re nothing, who seems to enjoy the way your mascara smudges under your puppy-dog eyes. 

Ophelia, patron saint of broken girls, was granted a virgin’s burial, but now that’s a love I could never be afforded. I can hope for a slut’s burial, maybe, once I’ve got my appropriately muscled legs and fat ass, my sufficiently gauzy skin and eyes. I refuse to die ugly. 

All this to say, I loved you. All this to say, please be well.