I knew this would get difficult, but I didn't know how difficult until I read this letter I wrote on December 4, 1962. It seems to be a prologue to a frame of mind I would be wrestling with for much of the rest of my life. It certainly forecasts a frame of mind which would succeed in making the lives of two husbands in a row miserable - and one for which I can almost forgive myself for breaking one very deserving-of-better heart. I wonder if I even sent this, since it's not signed and there is no accompanying envelope. I hope I didn't.

I begin with "I'm beginning to feel lost." I go on about becoming hardened, disillusioned, afraid of life and what it does to people, to me." I finish (one entire typed page) with "I need you...when I'm with you, I'm alive again...I care!" Yadda, yadda, yadda.

This could be written off as the usual "coming of age angst drivel" - in this case, coming of 19 or so - and I wish I could laugh at myself, except for the fact that I still felt that way years later, and put future husbands and boyfriends through the wringer, wanting to depend on them to "save" me in some undefined way.

I still have those moments, but I don't confuse them with reality or reach out for savior anymore. Some things do eventually pass.