At some point, I stopped wanting to open the Google Doc. For months I was obsessed with a publicly accessible text file about 60 pages long: little first-person abstractions written by a woman whom my boyfriend used to date.
Though she updated it semi-regularly, I was most interested in the early entries where I thought I glimpsed the man I know well, before I knew him. Names reduced to initials, days and months without years, and the sheen of opaque, poetic language allowed for a dangerous projection. But the story never progressed, or I never found it. Eventually, I got bored. I decided I didn’t want to know. Knowing wouldn’t scratch the masochistic itch. What I desired was to experience what she had, and knowing is not the same.
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