In one of these emails, I told Andreas that I had started going to therapy. He had been pressuring me to find a therapist for months, after I’d gone through a bad experience at the end of the summer. Putting this incident in the past was something that I was both ready and able to do, but my willingness to compartmentalize concerned him.

Andreas had found his own therapist online, and every week he would send me links to different doctors — usually middle-aged Jewish women — and urge me to follow up. He fixated on one in particular, a woman named Carole, who he had decided would be the perfect fit.

“Have you called Carole yet?” he would ask at least once a day.

I made excuses, telling him that it didn’t make sense because my insurance was about to run out, or that working two jobs would make scheduling a regular appointment impossible.

One time, I surrendered and played therapist with him, sprawling on the couch while he asked me questions in a woman’s falsetto. When he finally got me to confess one of my deepest insecurities, he became so upset by what I said that he jumped on top of me.

“I hope Carole doesn’t do this,” I said as he kissed my neck furiously.

As it turned out, he had been right: I did love therapy. I counted the days to my weekly appointments, and I don’t know that I could have survived that winter without them.

But therapy hadn’t changed the fact that I was wildly successful at acting normal while my world was unraveling. “Everyone thinks I’m doing so well, and I guess I am,” I wrote to Andreas in one of my last emails. “But I want to break things all the time. I fantasize about smashing store windows or screaming at people. Sometimes I think about hitting you and pulling your hair, but it always just turns into me kissing you anyway.”