Dear Serial,

Remember the first time I met you? I thought you were so boring. Everyone kept telling me I was being a fool to ignore you, but I just couldn’t concentrate on what you had to say. I had loftier ambitions than being with you. I was going to spend the weeks before Thanksgiving practicing the banjo and completing NaNoWriMo and throwing bowls on my new pottery wheel. I had goals. I had dreams. I had a sister who wouldn’t shut up, and I was trapped on a treadmill next to her. I figured: Why not?

Looking back, it all comes down to those first 53 minutes. My love for you lived and died inside that window of time; an insignificant sliver compared to the weeks of obsession that followed. I turned to Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and the state of Maryland’s criminal record search. I thought about you constantly. I hung on every single word. Your pauses. The phrases that didn’t make sense. The blog posts you wrote. If someone was talking about you, I was listening. I spent Thanksgiving without you, simultaneously enraged by your absence and enchanted by the possibilities the next week would bring. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it’s true. I was ready to take the next step. I was ready to ask you the hard questions, and by Christmas, the only thing I wanted in my stocking were the answers.

You didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, but I was so distracted that I didn’t even care. My obsession reached a fever pitch. When it came to you, I was the new mother gushing over her infant to a polite friend; I was the writer telling everyone at a party my next book idea.

“Serial,” my heart sang, as I hunched over my laptop at 1:00 AM, reading Jay’s police interviews for the 90th time.

Even so, I was always half a step behind the theories on Reddit, and two steps ahead of anyone I wanted to discuss you with In Real Life.

“So you know how Anthony kept getting in trouble in 1998,” I’d begin. “Not marijuana? SUSPICIOUS.”

“Wait,” my supposed friend/Serial enthusiast would interrupt. “That guy’s name was Adnan, was it not?”

Eventually, the curtain fell. The series ended. I realized that I would never get the answers I so desperately wanted, no matter how well I understood the criminal history of Jay’s family.

Serial, I’m moving on. I know you won’t come after me and I don’t care. Some relationships just aren’t meant to be. I’m going to dust off my Kindle, tune my banjo, log into Amazon, and place an order for 25 pounds of clay.

I’ll be fine, Serial. And so will you.