Brandon and I met at the start of our freshman year in college; he introduced himself as Benny. I found out about his fondness for aliases and its meaning later.

A few weeks into our first semester we happened to sit next to each other at the cafeteria, and he asked me a question that stood out from the small talk swirling around us: "What are you looking for, Julia?" "Knowledge--of any kind. What are you looking for, Benny?" "Eternal life... real life."

Our first long conversation was about his religion and my lack thereof, and before I left his room he gave me a book published by the Jehovah's Witnesses. The walls of his room were bare, while all other students I knew had posters and photos. What he had that no one else had was a large black briefcase. It contained Jehovah's Witnesses books and pamphlets and was meant for going door-to-door to proselytize.

Our conversations continued in person and over email and we started studying together. I noticed Brandon doesn't make eye contact like most people. His eyes connect with yours for a second, then wander, then connect for a second again. It gave him a furtive air. He wore purple contacts and shaped his eyebrows in a way that gave him a calmer expression. When he sat in a chair, the way he tucked his feet looked contorted and uncomfortable.

This boy who seemed to be hiding inside himself shone through with intuitive wisdom, creativity, and self-aware innocence that no one else seemed to notice. He was shy. He liked to read and write magical stories, made a small sculpture out of scraps of metal, and gave me a drawing of a hero kneeling at the edge of an abyss, peering down into the darkness. He loved Paradise Lost by John Milton and was particularly fascinated by the character of Satan (200006cc, 200010dd, 20040819). He was acutely observant of people's personalities and interactions in social situations though he wasn't social himself. I nicknamed him The Little Prince, after the title character in the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Although he never said so explicitly, he liked that, and the Little Prince image reappears in this archive at various times and places through the years (20000705, 20011008a, 20031105, 20070331).

On the last day of our first semester, Brandon told me that he is gay. Earlier that semester, he had come out to someone for the first time--a woman, and the circumstances were similar: she developed feelings for him, and he didn't want to lead her on. Her name is Vickie, and she has an unexpected role in this story later. He also wanted those close to him to know him for who he is. This, however, would turn out to be more complicated than he thought.

When we returned to college after the winter break, we began to spend more and more time together. Brandon decided to leave the Jehovah's Witnesses and to come out to his mother in a handwritten letter. We walked together to the mailbox. When he received the reply, he came to my room pale as a ghost, with dried blood on his nose (he got nosebleeds when very stressed), and asked me to read it.

Around this time, Brandon would often come to my room, sit on top of the folded comforter on my bed instead of a chair, and go with me everywhere, especially on weekends. I had not expected exactly that. Then I got used to it, and I was glad he felt comfortable around me. We learned emotional intimacy in large part with and from each other.

We both stayed on campus for spring break and spent it in much the same way. His mother was coming to terms with his sexuality and he felt optimistic. He made more friends and started avoiding me (200004aa, 200004bb, 200005aa). I felt hurt and betrayed. From my point of view, I had been there for him through the difficult time of leaving his conservative church and coming out to his family, and when those emotional crises passed and he no longer needed my support, he decided to discard me. This pattern has repeated for most of the following 15 years.

On the last day of our freshman year, I told Brandon I loved him. Why then, and why at all, if he was avoiding me? An author we both liked, Jeanette Winterson, wrote that when you ask people who they are, they reply with a job, a wallet, or a child. If someone asks who I am, I would reply with a love. I wanted him to know me for who I am. To that end, I also gave him the "profile", or journal, I kept of our relationship that is excerpted in this archive. Later that day, Brandon and I came across each other on the street in the presence of another friend, and he looked through me as if I were invisible (200005cc).

Brandon and I talked on and off over AIM during the summer, but once we were back at college, his efforts to avoid me intensified and took a different form. Our circles of friends mostly overlapped. When we were thrown together socially, he would talk to everyone in the group but me. When at the same table with other people, he would invite all but me to an event (200009aa, 200010aa, 200010bb, 200011aa). He threw a party in the common lounge of my dorm and also didn't invite me, knowing that I would either pass through there to get to my room or at the very least would hear about it. At the time, I didn't know that such demonstrative exclusion is a type of bullying (Williams & Nida 2011, BullyFreeAtWork.com) and how damaging it would be for my health and career even 15 years later (2015-present).

Brandon had come out only to a couple of people. To mutual friends who were used to seeing us together, this looked like the aftermath of a bad breakup. When they organized events, they knew that if I were invited, Brandon wouldn't go and as a result, my social life started to suffer. At first I kept silent because to talk to anyone about this would be equivalent to outing him before he was ready to come out to everyone. Eventually I talked to the one person I knew he had already come out to: Vickie.

Before that conversation, Vickie and I didn't know each other beyond a face and a name. We disliked each other from afar, because each of us knew the other had feelings for Brandon. He had always hung out with us separately - he likes to keep his close friendships separate from one another because that lets him feel more in control of each. I short-circuited this and my own jealousy simultaneously: I invited Vickie for a one-on-one conversation and asked her, "You were in the same boat as me and yet your friendship with him is thriving, what am I doing wrong?" We talked for hours, discovered we liked each other, and then went to talk to Brandon. When he saw us together, he was in shock - by confiding in a near-stranger and recent rival, I had done something he found inconceivable and the outcome had usurped his control of the situation. He yelled at Vickie because she had shown understanding and compassion to me. Then he verbally threw us out (20001125). Their friendship never recovered to what it had been; Vickie and I remained friends until a few years after graduation, when we lost touch.

Throughout this academic year, even though Brandon didn't confide in me any more, I could see he was increasingly miserable. He oscillated between haphazard attempts to dress better and growing a shaggy, unkempt beard. When walking, his drooping gait broadcast his dejection. The way he was treating me was a side effect of something unrelated that was gnawing at him and that I was afraid could destroy him. As a last resort, I hacked his email to find out, and continued to read his email undetected for the next two years (more on this later). This gave me a unique, behind-the-scenes view of his thought process because at the time - before cell phones, texting, and social media - people used email a lot and Brandon's email correspondence was especially detailed and descriptive.

What was depressing Brandon was, generally, sexual frustration and insecurity (20001009, 20010304a, 20010329), and specifically, unrequited infatuation for Michael, a gay guy I happened to know (20010223, 20010224, 20010304, 20010313, 20010328, 20010408). In an attempt to restore our friendship, I finagled this knowledge to where Brandon was eager to talk to me about Michael (200102bb, 200102cc). We came up with a "trade" arrangement: he gave me stories he had written in exchange for my insight and advice about Michael. This lasted from Feb. to Apr. 2001, when two things coincided: Micheal rejected Brandon, and I started dating Noah, a mutual friend. I was no longer useful to Brandon, and besides, now I had a boyfriend while he didn't, even though he desperately wanted one. He wrote me angry emails saying many times how he wanted nothing to do with me, never wanted to hear about being friends again, etc (200104dd, 200104ee, 200105aa, 200105bb). At the end of the academic year, soon after another such rant, he drove me several hours to another town, where I had an internship for the summer 200105cc). Brandon's mood of the moment can eclipse all shared history and intellectual and emotional affinity he has with a person. The mood of another moment can restore their significance to him again. This pattern also has repeated throughout the years we have known each other.

By spying on Brandon's email, I found out that he posted an ad on a gay dating website (200104cc, 200104cc photos, 200106aa) and solicited a prostitute (20010523) in NYC in advance of moving there for an internship for part of the summer of 2001. He would be spending junior year in Spain and Russia. The day before he left for his first semester abroad, he slept with a stranger in NYC whom he never saw again (20010730, 20010805). This was his first sexual experience with another man. At this time, he was using several aliases simultaneously when communicating with friends and strangers. He tends to use an alias when he is going through a crisis of confidence.

In Sep. 2001, I sent Brandon a practice LSAT CD I had got for free since I knew he would be studying for this exam. He was already abroad, so I mailed it to his home address and his parents forwarded it. In response, he wrote the Dean of students with a complaint that the college hadn't safeguarded his contact information (20010829). He had cut off contact with me at this point. In Dec. 2001, when he was talking to me again, he acknowledged receiving this CD in a neutral, even vaguely grateful manner (20011217). There was no difference in my attitude towards him between these two occasions. The only difference was in his mood and level of sexual frustration and loneliness at the moment. Our friendship has suffered a lot because of such reversals on his part and his difficulty moderating and compartmentalizing his emotions. The way he has treated me throughout the time we have known each other has often been a side effect of something unrelated to our relationship. In this sense, I'm the proverbial canary in the mine of his soul.

Later in Sep. 2001, Brandon started a relationship with Daniel, a fellow student in Spain (20010921, 20010923, 20011001, 20011002). Daniel was the one who pursued Brandon, and when we talked about it much later, Brandon admitted that he just "let it happen" because he wanted a boyfriend. In Dec. 2001, Brandon wrote me for the first time in months, and soon it emerged that he needed a favor: he asked me to find him an apartment off-campus, or, failing that, to get him a dorm room for the following academic year (20011213, 20011214). I got him a room - in our senior year we would be neighbors.

While Brandon was back home in the US for winter break, in a town where he had no friends, he talked to me online but after an argument cut off contact again (20020127, 20020128). In Jan. 2002 he started his semester in Russia. In Mar., he wrote me that he had stomach problems and his hair was falling out; he was also having a hard time speaking and understanding Russian and making friends, and felt unsure about continuing his long-distance relationship with Daniel (20020306, 20020307). Brandon had met another guy he was interested in and Daniel was far away. Another pattern of behavior that would emerge over the years is that if a guy isn't physically nearby and available often, Brandon starts pursuing others because his insecurities torment him when he is alone. He has said a number of times, "I want a boyfriend who can make me feel good about myself." (To that I always replied, "You are ready for a relationship when you feel good about yourself even when you're not in one.")

When Brandon's health, language skills, and social life in Russia improved, he again began to chafe about keeping in touch (20020328). When I asked him when he was coming back to the US, he didn't reply (20020514). In May 2001 I was studying for final exams; he called from a college building, where he had just got out of a cab after flying back from Russia, and asked to stay with me. He said he did that because he "wanted to save our friendship" (20020521, 200105bb). A couple of weeks later, he was saying (again) that he didn't want to be friends any more. (20020618, 20020619, 200206aa)

In our senior year, my room was between Brandon's and Noah's, and Vickie lived down the hall. My romantic relationship with Noah had not lasted, but we were (and still are) close friends. A couple of weeks into the semester, Brandon began to avoid me in the same way he had done two years before (200208aa, 200209aa). Now it was even more painful because when he invited others to his room, I could hear them through the wall.

I often got sick and felt fatigued during this academic year. There is no way to know such a long time after the fact, but I think the constant emotional pain and stress I was under because of the way Brandon was treating me played a role in these health issues. Noah witnessed this, knew the details and history of my relationship with Brandon, and his own friendship with Brandon cooled and ended as a result.

At some point in the fall semester, I confessed to Brandon about hacking his email. He was rightly furious, but since he avoided me anyway, that changed nothing. In an unrelated moment of anger several months later he reported the hacking to the college administration and I was summoned to talk with a dean about it. When the dean asked me if I had accessed Brandon's email, I said yes. I told him that Brandon was able to complain because I had already confessed to him—had not been caught, had volunteered.

I told the dean how Brandon had a difficult time coming out to his family and I was there for him through that, how he started avoiding me for no apparent reason the following year, how miserable he had been because he couldn't get a boyfriend, how at the time I hacked his email he was about to go to two foreign countries alone for a year, one of whose languages he barely spoke, how he had told me that he had suicidal thoughts in the past. I told the dean I found Brandon's behavior not only hurtful but also irrational; that I knew what I did was wrong but had no regrets--I had done it to help us both, it had served its purpose, and I had come clean about it. The dean decided that there would be no consequences for me. He was the third (after Vickie and Noah), and the most unbiased person to evaluate Brandon's and my behavior towards each other.

In the spring of 2003, Brandon started dating Stephen K., a bisexual guy he met at a club. He thinks of Stephen as the great love of his life and gave him a blue crystal heart as a gift, a symbol of his own heart. Their relationship lasted from March to July 2003, when Stephen admitted he kissed another guy and Brandon was very jealous (20031129). Despite his declarations of love, Brandon had gone alone to Spain for fun for most of the summer of 2003 instead of hanging out with Stephen in the US.

Even though he avoided me all senior year, at graduation Brandon agreed to a photo with me and another friend, Tom (200305aa). I was going to grad school, Brandon was going to law school in another state, and I didn't think I would hear from him again. Tom and I would turn out to be the only people from college he kept in touch with over the years.

Brandon wrote me in Nov. 2003, and although he didn't say so explicitly, he did it because he was at a new place, had no close friends or boyfriend there, and was lonely. This pattern also repeated in the following years. Brandon finds it extremely difficult to cope with loneliness because he feels worthless without other guys' reassurance, approval, and desire. He said he wrote me in part out of fear (20031102) after he didn't find me listed on the website of the grad school I had accepted an offer from. He knew I had no other reason to give up except the pain he had caused me. A year earlier he hoped I would be forced to leave the US so that he would be rid of me (200210aa).

In his first semester of law school, Brandon joined a gay fraternity and became one of the main organizers of events for it. Like with other things and people, his perception of his frat brothers depended mostly on his mood of the moment. When he was lonely and depressed, they seemed to him inadequate, unsophisticated, and immature (20031201, 20031221). When he started dating one of them, [OE], he reveled in their greatness (20040301). Brandon went to Mexico with his frat brothers for spring break, and [OE] made out with another guy from the group, ending their short relationship (20040331). Although Brandon would date others and even believe himself to love some later and tell me about them, [OE] was the last guy about whom he seemed genuinely excited and hopeful as opposed to settling for keeping loneliness and low self-esteem at bay. When we talked about that much later, he said about his short relationship with [OE], "That probably wasn't love but desperation." "Maybe every love has an element of desperation," I replied, and he was silent (20140222).

I visited Brandon for two weeks around Christmas and New Year in 2004 (20041223, 20041224.txt, 20041226, 20041228, 20041230, 20041231, 20050101), and for a couple of days in Sep. 2005, when I was in the same state for work. I met his mother and stepfather and some of his friends. He refused to spend the holidays together in 2005 in favor of hitting up the bars (20050919), even though if I visited him, it would only be for a fraction of the winter break. The reason was, as always, that he had no need of me at the time. While in 2004 he was lonely, in 2005 he had made more friends and for a few months was in a relationship with Ryan. His self-esteem was buoyed by this and he was eager to dive into the gay bar scene.

In 2006, Brandon finished law school and took the bar exam. We kept in touch irregularly because he refused to give me his phone number or talk online consistently (20060820, 20060904). In the fall of 2006, my boyfriend cheated on me and I ended the relationship. Soon after, I got very sick with mononucleosis (20061105). Brandon visited me for Thanksgiving, but still refused to keep in touch regularly (20061126). I was increasingly disappointed with him and his unwillingness to make a consistent effort to maintain our friendship and stopped talking to him after that. Until then, he never believed that I could.

After several months with no contact, in March 2007 Brandon messaged me saying he wanted to kill himself (20070330) and begging for my help. Even though he had passed the bar exam, he couldn't get a job as a lawyer and was working in the customer service of a website that sold (mostly porn) videos (20070402). He was living with his parents and had no boyfriend. After talking to me and a few days later to a therapist, he redoubled his job hunting efforts and within a couple of weeks landed several offers. He marveled at this sudden turn in his fortune after months of fruitless job searching (20070412). "I think I just needed someone to tell me what to do," he said about it later. This phrase stands out in my mind as emblematic of Brandon's inclination to be a follower (more on this in Substance).

At the same time as his plea for help, Brandon made a dramatic commitment to never abandon our friendship again ("I will carve into my flesh a promise to you...", 20070330). Before, he had always bristled at any idea of consistency. He made this promise not only because he needed my support, and not only because he knew (and said so in the same conversation) that he didn't deserve it. During the months when I didn't talk to him, I was doing exactly what he hammered on me to do whenever he didn't need me - to live my life without him in it. He knew that by asking me to help him he was in effect asking me to give up the emotional detachment I had gained during that time, and he knew that if I did, I would be much worse off later if he abandoned our friendship again. He kept his promise for the next 8 years.

Perhaps not coincidentally, these were the most stable years in both of our lives in terms of relationships. Brandon had his only long-term (i.e. lasting more than a year) relationships to date: with [SNC] (2008-2010) and [ST] (2014-2015). For most of that time he did not use an alias. We talked on the phone, Skype, or Hangouts on weekends. We called each other about real and perceived emergencies. (Brandon, in the middle of the night in my time zone: "I just walked in on my roommate watching porn; what do I do?") We saw each other at our college reunions in 2008 and 2013 (200806aa, 20130607), as well as when I was in California for work in 2010 (201009aa). At the latter time, he had recently been dumped by [SNC] and drove all the way from SF to LA to spend a weekend with me. When I was again in California in 2011, he didn't want to get together again: the break-up had faded in his mind and he had no need of the comfort that hanging out with me had given him earlier (20110221). For several years between 2007 and 2015, I lived in a popular vacation destination, and he had a standing invitation to visit me but he always said he couldn't afford it. I knew this was a lie but said nothing; he admitted it in 2015 (20150322). I invited him to my wedding in 2011, a low-key affair with only a few people in attendance. He again said he couldn't afford to come (20120216). I again knew this was a lie, but said nothing; he admitted it in 2015, too (20150322).

In 2014, I went to SF twice for work and extended my stay to spend a few days with Brandon each time (201402bb, 20140215, 20140216, 20140221, 20140222; 201411aa, 20141121). During these visits, I met some of his friends, as well as [MS], the guy he was dating at the time, and [ST], the guy he dumped [MS] for (more on this in Substance). At the time of my second visit in late 2014, Brandon had just been given a stressful work assignment that would last a year. While he foresaw how this would affect his behavior towards people (20141129, 20141215), he didn't see or didn't see it fit to mitigate its effect on our friendship. While my expectation for keeping in touch hardly changed and even became more relaxed with time, in 2015 he began to treat our friendship as a burden again and to lie in order to avoid talking to me. Normally he never raises his voice, but I heard more yelling from him in 2015 than for the entire 16 years before that. Some remains in my voicemail (20150501).

In July 2015 I contracted a fungal infection on the skin of my face. By Oct. 2015 a couple of treatments had failed and it was bad enough to make small children bawl on sight. Instead of being supportive, Brandon avoided talking to me.

He and [ST] broke up in early fall of 2015 and Brandon was lonely again. Our last conversation (20151018) was over a voice-only Hangout. I saw the conversation was going badly and decided to record it, hoping to listen to it later and glean what I may have missed due to the lack of visual feedback and how upset I was. I felt he trashed within minutes a friendship that took 16 years to build. Instead of being supportive as I had done many times for him, he said he was disgusted with what I had written him recently about why I was feeling down. When I asked what exactly disgusted him, he couldn't remember, but kept trashing our friendship out of pride. Until then I had never hung up on anyone. When I tried calling him back later, he didn't pick up. After a few more attempts to call, I figured out that he blocked my number. He didn't reply to my emails, which I sent every 1-2 weeks until April 2016, keeping to the cadence of our conversations.

In the recording (20151018), Brandon sounds already upset by something that had happened before we talked - his intonation changes abruptly and his vocabulary is more elementary than usual. In one of my subsequent emails, I asked him what had happened earlier that upset him and whether he had been drinking. He didn't reply. Based on my experience with and knowledge of him, my guess is that he had a romantic or sexual disappointment within the previous couple of days. As in 2001, when he was rejected by Michael (200104dd, 200104ee), he had no control over his own pain, but he knew he could control mine.

Brandon and I have been out of touch since October 2015; below are some limited observations. From October 2015 until April 2016 I wrote to him every 1-2 weeks, keeping to the cadence of our conversations; he never replied. During the first few months after I stopped writing to him in April 2016, he added as many Facebook friends as for his entire 9 years of Facebook usage before that. He grew exaggerated hipster sideburns, a style of facial hair he hasn't worn before. He went on some camping trips, although ever since I have known him he said that he tried camping once and that was enough. He started using Facebook more frequently to display a curated, purposely social version of his life. Also soon after April 2016, after using his real name on Facebook for years, he switched to using an alias again ("Ben Camarillo"). As with previous instances when he has done that, this indicates a crisis of confidence.

I stopped writing to Brandon in April 2016 because I lost my will to live, even though it was around this time that the skin damage from the infection on my face started to heal. In the fall of 2015, I tried to go on with life and work. Shortly before that awful conversation in October (20151018), I found out about a rare opportunity in my field in San Francisco and told Brandon about it (20151002, 20151004). Instead of being supportive as I always was when he was applying for jobs, he behaved as if I had said nothing.

The application deadline was in December 2015. Job applications in my field consist of the usual cover letter and CV plus a detailed multi-year research plan, and the latter takes time to write. I had written and submitted such applications in the past with no problem. Yet every time I tried to work on this one, I started sweating and feeling a physical malaise. This was brought on by the realization that my chances of getting the job were excellent but if got it, it wouldn't matter that SF is much larger than a college campus - if Brandon treated me like he sometimes did when we were in college, I would feel just as bad. In the end, I was unable to complete the application. The physical symptoms I experienced while trying to work on it are typical of trauma, the cumulative effect of the on-and-off negative treatment I received from Brandon over the previous 16 years.

I have a rare specialization and there are only a handful of places in the US where there are jobs in my field. Job openings like the one in SF do not come up often. The way Brandon treated me not only cost me an important professional opportunity but made doing my current job more difficult. I have to give public talks occasionally and I have given many with no problem so far. In November 2015, a month after my last conversation with him, I had a panic attack for the first time in my life - right before I was supposed to give a talk. The next time I had to give a talk, it happened again. These occasions were witnessed by coworkers. I ruled out the fungal infection damage on my face as the reason, because the panic attacks happened both when the audience was not close enough to see it and after it healed months later. Panic attacks are another common symptom of trauma, caused by the fact that trauma alters (for months, years, or permanently) the physiological response to stress in the human body. Normally, the "fight or flight" response to stress dissipates quickly after a threat has passed. But trauma may put the body in a continuous "fight or flight" state at the molecular level, such that additional stress, even if it would be insignificant under normal conditions, can cause a full-blown panic attack. (For a more detailed overview written for a general audience, see "The Body Keeps the Score" by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.)

The worst consequences of the way Brandon treated me are that I am unable to feel joy, happiness, or pleasure, to form new friendships or trust people. I am unable to feel emotionally connected to anyone. I have lost interest in my work and hobbies and have trouble focusing. I have thought about suicide. I have never experienced these things in any other context. I am not a fragile person, and Brandon, who knows me better than anyone, would be the first to confirm that. Then what happened? The short answer and the psychology term is betrayal trauma. The long answer is in Aftermath, along with links to biomedical and psychology studies showing the full consequences of this type of trauma.

Brandon's bullying me by demonstrative exclusion in college (more on this type of bullying: Williams & Nida 2011, BullyFreeAtWork.com), see-sawing between needing, using, and discarding me, and breaking a serious promise to maintain our friendship have damaged my health, my quality of life, and my career. The symptoms I have are typical of trauma and abuse, be it physical or psychological. Trauma and post-traumatic symptoms are often described as "a normal reaction to an abnormal situation". Brandon repeatedly sought, received, and acknowledged the significance of my friendship, care, help, understanding, and compassion for him, and then responded to that with hostility and betrayal - that is indeed an abnormal situation.