I have been writing in a journal on an almost-daily basis since I was 17 years old. This is a record of me going through each entry from the beginning, and commenting on the me from fifteen years ago.

Don’t get too caught up in the pain, lest you forget what it is like to love. For love, I would gladly take on that torment. For love, I would leap into the hellish abyss. For I am nothing without love. It is for you, though, that I now listen – I can touch and know your pain. I only hope to help Get you through this wound faster – so you may love again.

I think I’m talking about my friend Becky here. Well, actually, at the time she was my friend’s girlfriend, and the only reason I got to know her was because she was the only person on campus that I had any familiarity with. At some point, my friend broke up with her, and she was devastated. She came to me to talk and to cry. There was a few times she’d spend the night in my room, too exhausted from emotional outpouring to go to her dorm. The inadvertent side effect of this was people on my floor seeing a girl leave my room in the mornings, thus building myself a reputation as a ladies man. I didn’t mind.