not a good idea

If you're feeling blue, never, ever open that folder on your hard drive that contains a handful of emails from the last ex-boyfriend. For some reason, I didn't have my "auto-save" for my emails back in 1999, so only 5 emails got saved from him. I'm not sure why I saved them. They are from a brief period when he was out of town, in Boston, visiting his family because his sister's cancer suddenly re-appeared. The first four are the sort of "she's doing better than I had expected/feared" from mid-May. The fifth, and last one saved is from the first week of June, when he went back up to Boston for her funeral.

It's just so strange to re-read these, feel the sadness, the helplessness of that time. And of course, knowing where the story goes after that. The next three weeks were him vascillating from quiet neediness to growing distancing from me. Both seemed quite normal and appropriate; so when he broke up with me by the end of June, it was, and wasn't, expected.

Oh, another thing, if you plan on re-reading those handful of emails form your last ex-boyfriend, Disc 2 of Marianne Faithfull's Perfect Stranger is perfect. Just make sure you hide the razor blades and kitchen knives.