Alice took off her glasses and placed them on the coffee table beside her. Her eyes were growing red from crying and she grabbed a tissue to dry them. “I guess Lara would make you happier than I ever could, huh?”

“Alice, you know that’s not true.”

“Whatever, Dana. I’m sorry I’ve made your life so fucking unbearable. I assure you it won’t happen again.”

“Alice, don’t be like this. Look, I’m so, so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. It kills…,” she trailed off as her words were swallowed up by her sobbing. “It…kills me to have to do this. I don’t want to leave you, I love you. And I don’t want to leave us either. But I can’t continue on the way we’ve been. It’s not healthy, Al…for either one of us. We’re hurting each other so much and I don’t want to lose you completely because of that. That’s why we shouldn’t be together when were so fucked up like this.

“Don’t do this, Dana, please,” pleaded a sobbing Alice.

“Al…,” Dana started. But as she looked at the grieving, near-hysterical woman in front of her, she realized that she had no words of comfort. She continued to stare at Alice, unsure of how to proceed, and noticed how small, pained, and vulnerable she appeared. Dana hated herself in that moment for causing such a demoralization in the woman she loved.

“How can you just leave me like this?”

Dana shut her eyes tightly as she listened to the writer verbalize the exact same question she had wondered to herself for weeks now. She just couldn’t get around the fact that it seemed so cold and heartless to leave Alice in the state she was in…but then again, Dana was suffocating in this and Alice’s constant jealous accusations and medication-induced paranoia didn’t seem as if it would stop anytime soon.

“I think you need to see someone…professionally I mean. You’re not healthy right now, Al. And it scares me.”

“So then I guess running away will just make it all better for you, right Dane? Out of sight, out of mind, huh?”

“You know it’s not like that” Dana exclaimed in a hush whisper. She knew Alice would react this way, but hearing her accuse her of walking away to make herself feel better was just too painful…and maybe that was because the truth hurt. “Al, you need help. More help than I’m able to give you. It’s not just the pills and all the alcohol, it’s the way you’ve been acting lately. You’re not yourself anymore, and I just don’t know how to get back the woman I fell in love with. If I thought I could fix this, and make you better again, I’d never leave. I couldn’t just abandon you if I thought I could help. But this is beyond what I’m capable of, you have to understand that. Me being here, in this relationship, it’s just making matters that much worse. You said yourself that the reason you’ve become so reliant on the pills is because of your fear and anxiety over our relationship. Well maybe it’d be best for you if we ended it now before it became too much for either of us to handle.”