Why couldn’t she have slid it under the door? He wondered. Why couldn’t she have folded it? It looked just like any other note she would leave him, like, Could you try to fix the broken knocker? Or I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note –I had to do it for myself – could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he could have hated her for the plainnesss of it, a message without adornment, without any small clue to indicate that yes, I would sooner die than have to write this again. Where were the dried teardrops? Where was the tremor in the script?
He couldn’t bear to live, but he couldn’t bear to die. He couldn’t bear the thought of her making love to someone else, but neither could he bear the absence of the thought. And as for the note, he couldn’t bear to keep it, but he couldn’t bear to destroy it either.
So he tried to lose it.
But like his life, he couldn’t for the life of him to lose the note. It kept returning to him. It stayed with him, like a part of him, like a birthmark, like a limb, it was on him, in him, him, his hymn: I had to do it for myself.
-Jonathan Safran Foer.
