Things You Weren't Supposed to Read

Last century, when I was in college at San Francisco State, I fell in love with a boy who was in love with someone else. Though he was moving to England to be with her, it didn't stop him from falling in love with me before the semester ended. We said good-bye in tears as I boarded a plane for Germany, determined as I was to beat him out of the country.

Three months later, back in San Francisco, I received a package from my mother: a large manila envelope stuffed with 24 fat letters, each one addressed to me and postmarked from a small village in England.

The gist: he loved me, not her, she was insecure and needy, he had to get out of there, he was flying to Florida, meet him in Orlando, move to the Caribbean, work on sailboats, bask in the glory and splendor of our love.

Based on three weeks and 24 letters, I packed up my life and moved 3,700 miles from home, never asking myself what he told the English girl, or how she might have felt had she read those letters. It never even occurred to me.

Half a year after that, our relationship as worn and crusty as a derelict boat, I picked up this notepad of his that was always laying around. For the first time in my life, I read something I wasn't supposed to read.

It was addictive.

Especially when it turned out to be letters to the girl in England. And now it was me he no longer loved.

Back in San Francisco, I moved into a flat with two roommates. In no time, I was reading their letters, their journals, anything I could get my hands on when they weren't around. I learned in the pages of their flowery diaries what they thought about each other. Even more sickly satisfying: what they thought about me. In person, Jen said, "How cool!" as I walked out the door wearing a fedora to a Humphrey Bogart retrospective at the Castro. In her journal, she mocked me with mean little jabs. Vividly I remember the knotty pit in my gut as I read it.

It hurt, but I kind of liked it. It felt wrong the same way I imagined shoplifting felt wrong to Winona Ryder. A thrill it was, like jumping out of an airplane, freefalling into private thoughts as I listened for the key in the lock. It was deliciously toxic, that mix of good and terrible. I craved it like a smoker for a cigarette.

When I moved out, I quit, cold turkey, never again. In that year of living dangerously, I learned suspicion is not your friend. If someone doesn't have the guts to tell you their truth, then you have to trust your gut. It's the best evidence you'll ever have, and no written words will ever prove better than what you feel and carry inside you.