The original entry.

As a preface to this response, I want to note that, working on the last once, I felt a strange elation. It was not an easy part of myself to confront or a situation that I was eager to revisit, but I afterward felt a flutter. It might have been a flash of how I felt in that time in my life, though not one brought about by the circumstance. Whatever that emotion was, I do not think I had felt it in fifteen years. It lingered only a few minutes.

I don't know if this sensation will recur, but it was worth noting.

I wrote this entry, or the letter from which I created the entry, nine months into my relationship with Kate.

I've decided that I will try to address these replies to who I was then. Otherwise, I feel as though I am snickering about him behind his back.

I care about myself too much to allow some little masochistic part to torment me endlessly and needlessly. I am practically a legal adult!

There is nothing that undermines one's assertion that one is self-reliant than saying that one is practically a legal adult.

I also don't know what you are talking about here. You had the depression and anxiety I am still sorting out, but there is more context around this that I am missing.

Why in the name of all which I hold holy (that being Kate) should I hurt myself anymore?

I do not know what you are talking about here. I will bet it was passive-aggressively projecting onto Kate.

Kate was not a fan of your trying to deify her this way. I find it cringe-worthy reading it now. At the time, you thought you were being romantic, but it is not that at all. It is, at best, cloying.

I was never ever a victim. But I was such a fool. But "was" is not "am." I shall not allow myself to enter a self-destructive spin, no[r] shall I let Kate if I have any power to stop it.

Again, my bet is on projection. And you were a fool and a victim then, often by your own hand. Sometimes, it was as though you slapped yourself across the face and then looked for someone to help you find the person who had done it.

I wish that you had spoken to a competent therapist back then, though you wouldn't have thought you needed one and no one was telling you differently. I don't know how amenable you would have been to see a therapist. Kate did at that time. That seemed reasonable to you, but I am not sure you would have agreed if you were the one on the sofa.

I love her as she is. In a way, which only she would completely understand, I've always loved her. And I won't allow that to end, not without a fight.

Oh my god, why did you think the love was going to end? This was nine months in. Granted, Kate initially only expected you to be a fling before she got attached. I do not remember, not even a year in, thinking this relationship would end. We got on well, despite personal problems she was having with her parents.

She scares me so much at times. But I will protect her to the death as long as she allows me.

You talked above about being self-reliant. Maybe, just maybe, Kate could have stood on her own two feet and didn't need a white knight. Or, if she did, she could have asked you to be one. She leaned on you when she ran away from home once. She was a smart, capable girl. Given her time in therapy, I would guess she was more emotionally articulate than you at that time.

When I kissed her that first time in the theater, I knew that she was something totally different. That we couldn't have a ho-hum relationship.

I'll give you this, to a degree. The first time you kissed her, she was not thrilled. It was too premature and presumptuous. You should not have done it. In different circumstances, that would have been grounds to end the date right there.

Now, the first time she kissed you? That was connection. You were emotionally fumbling and overcompensating, but Kate was one of the least ho-hum people you ever met. Your relationship with her will be great for you, up to the point where you break up and don't stop seeing one another. Then, it will be gutting.

That does not make your prediction wrong. Your relationship was not ho-hum. She was not like the girls you were with prior. She felt more like an equal, even if you didn't always accept this. She had better taste in movies, clothing, and books. She'd had experiences with the wilder side of her teens that you found intimidating, but you couldn't process this. You wanted to protect her from herself, but she didn't need that protection. She'd spent her whole life with herself, skinned her own knees, bruised her own ego, fractured her own relationships. She would call if she needed help.

It's not a relationship; it's a life[-]altering experience. A force of nature, as I have put it so many times. I knew I wanted [her] for all that she is. For the ever frightening passion inside her.

Yes and no. It was a relationship and it did alter your life but phrasing it this way is an overstatement. Kate helped you become a better, more well-rounded person. She had you read EM Forster. You disliked it the first time and then adored it when you were ready for it. Good relationships improve you, but all relationships alter you in some way.

Without Kate, you don't go to SUNY New Paltz, so you don't meet Emily, so you don't almost marry Emily, so you don't lick your wounds of that breakup with a sardonic college freshman who becomes the first woman you fully love, so you don't have your heart broken by her but survive, stand on your own two feet, decide you are fine staying single, and meet the woman who becomes your wife a week later. With any outcome in your life, you can trace it back to sources. Is that line significant? It feels that way looking back, but there is an infinity of lines that did not happen. If you did not love Kate, you would have still loved someone and a multitude of factors in your life might have changed for you. You cannot know and it isn't worth the mental strain to speculate.

It boils down to: were your years with Kate good? Yes. She was someone you loved then, who loved you back, who deserved your love, and whom you respect now. When she read a section of your first novel and was impressed at how you had progressed as a writer, it made you feel like you were a real writer.

It was not even an adult relationship. It's so far past that.

It wasn't. It was maybe, arguably, barely your first adult relationship. You made it through senior year in high school and freshman year of college. There was at least one breakup that didn't stick. (There might have been another, but I can remember only one frantic make-up.) She wanted to have a full college experience, which meant other adventures. That is why she finally left, for which you agonized (but we will get to that in time).

It's like dating Jesus.

(I'm not including the whole quote.)

You weren't wrong, not how you explained it. Dating Kate was, for you, like being seen as something pure and divine when you felt like neither. After Jen left, you felt dirty and depressed. Kate didn't see you that way. She just loved you and helped you love yourself again.

Kate helped save your soul from the torture you felt you deserved. I'm willing to give you that analogy. This was why being with Kate is still something you cherish because you did love her, and she loved you back.

I initially wanted a frivolous fling with her as she wanted with me. Before I would not have admitted that. But she inspires me to be honest to myself as well as her.

I suspect this is a lie. Ironic, no? It took you a little while to accept that you could be together for more than a summer. For the first month or so, she was darling, but she was erratic. You didn't know if she would be stable enough for something lasting. You decided she would be, likely before this was true, but you were right.

I like who I am now, but not who I was. And I can't forgive who I was. Not just yet.

Oh, my poor sweet child. What the hell do you imagine I am doing right now? You were flawed and scrabbling. You flailed and hurt people with arrogance and callousness because you were insecure. You will spend over a decade dealing with the abandonment issue that predicated some romantic relationships, ones that kept you when they turned septic. You will seek your own forgiveness often and be unable to give it.

I forgive you, kid. You were doing the best you could, even if you were scared. I love you.

All I can do is know that somehow, my life will work. That for this torture there IS redemption.

There is. You have a great life with people who love you, even if you don't see them often. I don't know why you think you need to be redeemed this much. You were a good person. Even then, there weren't many people who had a word to say against you, and fewer still who would have meant it.

You are breaking my heart. I want to hug you.

The knowledge of these things gives me power over them. I need my past to remain in my past.

It doesn't. The past never stays there. It is the foundation of the path we walk every day. It is the ground from which vast forests grow, trees under which we can rest for a while and reflect. You cannot remain in the past, but it never stays put.

When I am with her, I can lose myself in her kisses and caresses. She becomes my whole world. I don't want to float away. I want to be kissing her and holding her with every fiber of my being. It makes me feel more human. Not so detached from the world.

I remember this. You would kiss girls or let them kiss you and were just elsewhere. You understood that kissing them was something you were meant to enjoy and something expected of you, so you did it. You liked being with the girls, but it was what happened before the kiss that was more interesting to you. This was among the reasons that you did not stay with these girls. There wasn't a physical spark, so you assumed that meant there shouldn't be a romantic one. (Conversely, you had a physical spark with a few girls with whom you did not have any interest in a romantic one. This should have taught you an important lesson, but it didn't.)

With Kate, being physical felt right for the first time. You knew she was right for you, intellectually, romantically, and sexually. She wasn't trying to force you into things. She didn't demean you. She never bored you. She was kind and lovely. When she kissed you that first time in the movie theater, it was the kiss of someone who was going to be a friend to you, not only a lover.

Kate was a wonderful person. You didn't put your lips on many of those.

I don't ever want her to feel worthless or degraded around me or because of me.

I don't know exactly what you did that you felt the need to write this line, but I have a guess. I assure you that I wish you hadn't done it. You could have been kinder to Kate where she needed it and not made her issues yours. You took too long internalizing that the person in your arms isn't a part of you and cannot be held to what you hope you would have done in that situation.

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.