"I want to draw a picture," he said to me once, his eyes alight, "of a couple walking together, the boy's arm around the girl's. He's in baggy jeans, she's in a short skirt. They are walking in the rain, and the girl is wearing the boy's coat. They've both had a rough day, but now they're just enjoying the moment, just reveling in being together."

For two weeks now we haven't gone out together. Our conversations are filled with large, awkward silences that eventually morph into shouting matches.

As I write the letter I tell myself it's for the best, but that doesn't stop my heart from feeling as if it's caught in my chest. Nor does it help the swirling sensation in my stomach as I walk to his house the next day and ask if he got my note.

Much yelling ensues. We can't be friends, can't be anything to each other, he says. What was left of our relationship is over. I silently ask myself if anything was left. Not of our relationship. But of the kind, good-hearted person who used to hold me and promise to marry me and stay with me forever. He's happy now, without me. So happy, in fact, that in order to balance the cosmic order of the universe, he must be unspeakably cruel to me. I tell him I think we should be mature about this. I didn't mean forever, let's just not talk to each other for a week or so. Come on, I don't want to end this on a bad note. He slams the door in my face.

Goodbye. Good luck with the rest of your life.

With every step I take walking back home, I repeat to myself, "It's for the best, it's for the best, it's for the best..." Unfortunately, this mantra does nothing to ease the still-lingering sensation of a clamp over my heart.

Hours later, I go meet my friend at a coffee shop. He will understand. Maybe he'll tell me why I still feel the old regret, the longing for what I lost today.

He's dressed in what is casual to him: a black pinstriped blazer over a faded yellow T-shirt. Black and red striped tie hanging down. Expensive loose-fitting jeans. Enormously clunky boots.

"He always made it seem as if it was a gift to be loved by him, something that I acquired just by luck and would never be good enough to truly deserve. And I could never convince him otherwise. It was like the word of God or something: what He commands shall be done," I say after sipping my mint and mocha iced cappuccino.

My friend fixes me with a soft brown-eyed stare. "Do you think you deserved him?"

"Yes...and no. Back when things were good, I used to wonder what I'd done to deserve this amazing person who loved me and wrote poems for me and who made me feel so happy. Then once things changed, I used to wonder what I'd done to deserve this person who used to love me and now became someone who pointed out all my faults and who made me feel as disposable as a used tissue."

Embarrassingly enough, I hear my voice cracking. I sound far-off, as if I am speaking to my friend from the other side of the street. "I know nothing would ever have come out of the relationship...it was pretty much doomed from the start. We could have been friends, at least. I keep replaying the good times in my head and I long for all that again. All I wanted was someone to make me feel special, and loved, and worth something..."

My friend stares at me again. When he finally speaks, he speaks softly and deliberately. His dark hair falls into his eyes.

"Listen to me. You don't need someone else to make you feel special, and you definitely don't need him. The only thing you really need is the knowledge that you...are you. You can't change your faults any more than you can change your good qualities. And anyone who can't accept you, all of you, will never be able to give you the companionship and the love you deserve."

I start to cry and instantly I regret it. My friend is sweet about it, though. I think we should get going, he says, and leads me out of the coffee shop. Absently I smooth down my short denim skirt.

It is raining outside. My friend smiles down at me and offers me his blazer. I take it gratefully and smile back through my tears. The clamp lifts over my heart as I realize I feel special. I feel loved for my good qualities and my bad. I am me, he is my friend, and we are together.

Wordlessly, he wraps an arm around me and we head home.