A confession.

Eight years ago, I read my boyfriend's journal. He kept it in a black and white composition book.

We were living in a castle in The Netherlands. He had borrowed an Ani Difranco CD and I was in his room to retrieve it; he had given me permission to do such. Told me that it was in the top drawer of his desk. So I went into his room and opened the top drawer of his desk and found the CD right on top. Right on top of the black and white composition book. And I did what I shouldn't have. I picked it up and started thumbing through it.

He had written a letter to his best friend from home. Written a letter to her and taped it into his journal. He had chronicled a few weeks of his summer for her. And he had written about his trip the previous summer -- nearly a year earlier -- to visit me. He had written about our drive back from downtown, cruising along Route 315 in my mother's convertible, the top down, wonderful music blaring from the speakers. He had written how wonderful the drive had been. He had written about how despite how wonderful it was to be cruising down the highway in my mom's convertible, that something had been missing. She hadn't been there. And so a feeling of melancholy blanketed him. He had written that he missed her. He had written that she was home to him. All this while he was with me.

The next day, I confronted him. Not about the contents of the journal, of course. I merely told him that I desperately loved him and could tell that he didn't love me. "I have loved you passionately," he told me. Past tense.

The moral of the story? Nothing good can ever come from reading another's private thoughts.