That conversation-in-head sounds highly familiar, yes. I spend all my time feeling stupid and it’s just about possible that using 97% of my mental energy on complex layers of metagloom is not helpful. Funny, that.

My best diversionary tactic therapywise is to talk at great length about my Safe Neuroses, because analysing things that are valid subjects for therapy is quite a cunning way of disguising the fact that I am simply skirting over the Abyss Of Screaming Raw Neurons. Although I’m pretty sure that my therapist spotted that a whole year of therapy with a complete lack of Relationship Stuff was not very subtle at all of me.

(Incidentally, for me that always then spirals into a conversation that goes roughly, “HEY, YOU’D BETTER NOT LET ON THAT YOU FEEL THIS WAY, SELF, BECAUSE PEOPLE REALLY DON’T LIKE AN INSECURE LOSER! (Like yourself.) WAIT, WHAT? NO, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO STOP THINKING, YOU LOSER, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!? D’oh! Ahhh, crap, let’s just stay away from other humans, shall we?” etc.)

Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to say congratulations on your graduation from counseling, from a fellow alumna who is also prone to oversharing.

Last year I had a lab for my course, and one of our demonstrators was hot as, and vibing all sorts of gay. (I started getting up half an hour early so I could put on eyeliner for a 9am lab, is how hot. I don’t usually get up by 9am for a 9am lab. But anyway.)

I fail at romantic situations so I spent the whole lab being too scared to do anything but talk to her intermittently about science and drop things when she looked at me. She didn’t have a name tag so at the end of the session a) I had no way of getting in contact with her and b) I was unlikely to see her again (because the demonstrators rotate). But! I had found out her area of PhD research! Excellent.

So I went home and googled her on our uni web site, and found her full name, which let’s say was Sarah Smith. There was a picture of her and everything! I was very happy.

Then I got into my lab again the next day and SHE WAS THERE (that’s not supposed to happen!). I got all flustered and my lab partner asked me where to put something and I said “Over there next to Sarah”, forgetting there was NO EARTHLY REASON why I or ANYONE ELSE IN THE LAB would know her name. She was clearly within hearing distance and turned round to look at me like, “What the fuck?” I avoided her for rest of the day in shame.

She did not come back. Thank goodness. I am not allowed to use the internet — I cannot be trusted with that information.

After I read the news article, I had lunch with an old friend – a guy I dated in college, who was as far away from a psycho-killer as one can dispositionally get. And so of course I was like, “You’ll never guess what I found out this morning!”

But the surprise was that actually, he did guess. I got like five sentences into the story, and he got this strange and knowing look on his face, and it turns out that HIS WIFE went on a date with this same psycho-killer-to-be in high school too! And her best friend had actually been psycho-killer-to-be’s girlfriend for a while. So my friend’s wife had found out about the case some months earlier, and been following it.

She and I had never known this point of connection because we went to different high schools, and then when we met as adults, we weren’t about to sit down and compare our list of ex’s to find any other potential overlaps, you know?

So of course I e-mailed her right away and was like, “You dated him too? Did he say this? Did he do that? Can you believe all this?”

This is all a very long way to say that I, too, was extraordinarily relieved to have a point of connection with someone about this.

And of course, there are people whose lives are much more shaken up than mine – of course! My shake-up is barely noticeable in the grand spectrum of shake-ups over this guy.

Nevertheless, yeah, I get you about the sense of relief.

One other thing therapy has done, incidentally, is make me overshare.

I think it’s just that I’ve had such a hard time sorting out how I felt about all that… I mean, you know, he’d been such an important part of my life; and yet he was not a part of my life any longer; yet the role he’d played (which wasn’t all bad, though in hindsight I wouldn’t say it was a healthy relationship) continues to shape who I am now; and yet how could I be taking up precious time with grief when there were people close to the family who were understandably vastly more devastated?; and was there something I could have done to prevent this? etc.

Anyway, I guess when I read your comment I felt a little less alone with all those swirling and confusing thoughts, is all. Which is not any kind of “bright side,” and I’m sorry if I made it sound like it was.

Since he and I had lost touch I kind of felt like I somehow wasn’t entitled to be as shaken up about it as I was, which makes no sense. And I also couldn’t quite put words to the ways in which I was shaken up. Even the anniversary of their deaths was hard.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, and once again I *really* don’t mean to express any joy at your being a member of this club!

Others eventually did the online and offline legwork and proved it. I believe there was a great kerfuffle and apologies and some forgiveness and some not. I had disappeared from the group by then.

On the other hand, I found a good friend from those days by Googling his old handle and his names and state of residence. That was cool.