My Chemical Romance is calling it quits after 12 years and four albums. The news leaves fans bummed out and asking why? On March 22, a brief general statement was posted on the band’s website, calling their 12-year stint “a blessing.” The short paragraph concluded with: “And now, like all great things, it has come time for it to end. Thanks for all of your support and for being part of the adventure.”

Gerard Way, the band’s lead singer, decided to answer fans’ questions. He posted a nearly 2,200-word essay entitled, A Vigil, On Birds and Glass, in which he makes clear the breakup is no one’s fault. In poetic words, he shares his deep feelings and insights, explains his reasons in no uncertain terms and offers fans a heartfelt personal goodbye. “I can assure you there was no divorce, argument, failure, accident, villain, or knife in the back that caused this,” he writes. “Again, this was no one’s fault, and it had been quietly in the works, whether we knew it or not, long before any sensationalism, scandal, or rumor.”

How long has the breakup been “quietly in the works?” According to Way, the same things that made the band great “were the very things that were going to end us.” His essay mentions a fatal flaw, “a doomsday device, should certain events occur or cease occurring, [that] would detonate.” He personally accepted this and thought it made the band perfect: “a perfect machine, beautiful, yet self-aware of its system. Under directive to terminate before it becomes compromised.”

There’s something to be said for bands that call it quits on their own terms. My Chemical Romance did just that. Way leaves us with these parting words: “To me that’s rock and roll. And I believe in rock and roll.”