Sometime in the 21st century

the long version

"When your mind's collapsing and you're running out of resources, the whole world collapses. You think your salvation comes from another person, so you seek that person as best as you can, whether you realize that person means salvation to you or not. You try to communicate all of yourself to that person, and you await a response. This is the situation of the narrator. He talks of "Someone", sees the whole future of his life with or without her, as he processes all of his thoughts about everything, and tries to assert and express what he believes to be true. "Somehow deep and strange loneliness -- and of course I am confessing to this as I write -- is the most shameful, most disconnecting thing of all. I don't know how many budding friendships I have destroyed by saying what was universally true." A strange book from a past version of myself"--Amazon