05-19-04 @ 10:37 am EDT

I feel very sad today, and I don't know why. -_-

Maybe it's one of those sadnesses that come about due to some unresolved thing I've been shoving into the back of my mind...? The only thing I can think of is another situation involving someone I have not heard from in a long while, after they said they would write to me. Rather than bitch my head off futilely like I always do, I will try to simply outline what has happened, and then ask what I should do.

*I* wrote to this person *first.* So maybe that was a mistake. I'm assuming here, laying blame when I should not be, but in these situations I feel I should always blame someone--either the other person or myself. I don't want to blame this person so all I can do is blame me...though anyone who reads Skew regularly knows that the blame actually goes both ways, in my mind, depending on my mood and circumstances. But anyway...sorry about that. I wrote to this person first in February I think. I knew them from a message board I don't really visit anymore. They had offered to help me out back when the jury duty thing first started, and though that attempt rather fell through (and I did feel kind of resentful about that, though I hid it because the problem seemed to go away on its own...that's another story, sorry again), at least they had tried, which is more than many people would do. I had read some of their spiritual beliefs on the site and found them interesting but since I'm so clueless on the subject I never asked about it. Spirituality has never been my thing.

Well, around February, whenever I found that native spirituality article I posted in here, I got to thinking about my own spirituality, and then I got to thinking about this person again. They seemed to know some on the subject, so who better to ask since I was now so interested and seeking some sort of guidance? I don't really know anyone else on the Net who has any knowledge of this, short of just e-mailing a total stranger out of the blue. I decided I would bother this person instead since I find that e-mailing total strangers for info they may not even have is rather rude. (I don't really mind when strangers ask me about something it's certain I KNOW, but when people assume I know something that I don't, I can get somewhat offended. Cue all the people who used my writing websites for mythology research, and kept asking me questions about North Manitou Island. *sigh*)

I didn't know her...okay, it's a her...e-mail address. I was too embarrassed to return to the board since I had been gone for so long, there's no way I could just pop in again, lurk, and leave without explaining myself, and how could I do that when I had no real explanation other than "I freaked out"? I seemed to remember she'd sent an e-mail once announcing somebody's birthday though, and I dug that out and found her address on it. I checked at Yahoo! to see if her profile was still valid and it was, so that meant her address was probably valid too. Then I e-mailed her, letting her know my situation and why I was writing to her specifically and asking for information on the matter. I was very clear to say that I hoped I was not bothering her, and apologized if I was. I always leave people plenty of room to excuse themselves if I'm bothering them at a bad time. Honestly, as my own habits are so abnormal, I really can't tell when other people will be too busy or not busy enough. This is one reason I don't trust myself to lean on people's shoulders or ask for a listening ear even when they say they wouldn't mind. If it turns out they're too busy and can't say so, I will get all offended and then things start to go downhill. You've seen how I am when it comes to waiting for e-mails. I have NO concept of how long I should wait. After a month or so I really start to wonder if something is wrong, even if nothing is and I just need to be more patient. I guess everybody is different and no one could ever tell me what the normal time to wait would be. So anyway...

I received a response almost immediately. She claimed to be happy to hear from me and even missed me on the board. Of course she was willing to give me information and discussion on the spirituality matter. She did not mind hearing from me at all, and I could write back to her whenever I wished.

I wrote my second e-mail then, going into more detail about what I'd been thinking lately. I sent her the spirituality article and asked for her opinion on it, I believe. My e-mail was rather long as I recall; you know how it is. I sent it and awaited her reply.

She e-mailed me promptly again with some responses of her own. I grow a bit confused here; it was either this e-mail or her next where she sent me a short e-mail saying that she didn't have the time to reply to me indepth just yet, but she hoped to have time in the next few days and I would hear from her then. Again she stated she loved hearing from me and my questions were not stupid as I insisted they were; she found our discussion very interesting. I decided to wait for her next letter rather than reply to this short one. (I often don't reply to short "This is what I'm up to, I'll send you a longer e-mail later" e-mails as I feel it would be redundant and would take up a busy person's time. I usually just wait for them to send the longer e-mail. Is this right of me to do this, or are responses expected in these cases? This is something I've been wondering about, and maybe it's what leads to misunderstanding in the first place. I always just assumed I was not meant to reply to short "I'll get back to you later" e-mails.)

Well, you've probably guessed by now how the rest of this entry will go. I waited the few days and there was no response. Well, she'd said she was busy, so I waited some more. About a month went by with no word and I was growing very discouraged now. Should I have replied to that short e-mail? Maybe by not replying, I'd given her the hint that I no longer wished to write? Was she busy, or snubbing me, or what? I really could not tell. I tried to wait longer, but the agonizing just overcame me. I at last sent a short e-mail asking if she was doing well, and apologized again if I had written at a bad time.

I got a response the very next day. She told me she had had some "family emergencies" which had kept her offline for the past several weeks, but she was back online now. Now please let me confess something which ashames me somewhat, but I do wonder about it. I just found it kind of odd that she came back online after so long, right when I e-mailed her to ask if she was okay. I just find the timing strange...but that's probably my paranoia speaking. Aside from believing nobody in their right mind would ever want to engage in online discussion with me, I had no reason to believe she would lie to me like that. :(

Anyway, I replied again to apologize for writing at a bad time, I hoped things were settling. I never did learn what she meant by "emergencies" so I don't know how bad it might have been, and it makes me feel doubly guilty that here I am practically demanding her attention when she could have really bad things going on. She didn't clarify though, just wrote back to say that, nonsense, I had not written at a bad time. I had said in my earlier e-mail that I was feeling depressed lately, and in her e-mail she said that if I needed someone to talk to, I could talk to her. I didn't take her up on that offer as I sensed her busyness, though I was tempted to since she'd asked. But I didn't. She said she would write back when she got time on the weekend.

The weekend, then Monday, passed...no e-mail.

I think I e-mailed her again; again, I might be getting the e-mails just a bit mixed up, though this is the basic gist of how it went. Again I think I asked after her as politely as I could, and got a short response. Now she was suffering from some sort of respiratory problem but it was clearing up and she hoped to write to me in the next few days. That was it. I decided not to reply with a short annoying e-mail (see my above reasoning), and so waited.

The few days passed...and well, that was back in March sometime. Now it's almost late May, and I have no clue what has happened.

Maybe the family emergencies were not over? Or the respiratory problem got worse. Or something else very important and possibly bad. That's likely what it is.

But the louder part of my brain is screaming, maybe she was putting me off all along (delays did seem to come up every time I expected a longer response), and just did not want to be rude to me? Maybe I wrote to her at a bad time, just as it looks like I did, and she didn't want to let me down, but she had to anyway to tend to her life. Maybe she lost my address--or lost her Internet connection--or simply forgot to reply. Maybe her e-mail was lost somewhere along the way, and she's actually wondering why *I* haven't written back. Or maybe she really DIDN'T want to write to me but just didn't know how to say so without sending me into a screaming fit. That's the only reason I can think of why people would rather not write than let me know they don't want to write; I know by now that I can be a scary unpleasant person when I'm let down. :(

When this first started I told myself, "If I do not hear back from her then I will not bother trying anymore. Someone is obviously sending me a sign that this was not meant to be." Then after settling a bit I told myself, "I will wait two months, and then see what happens." Then I said, "I will wait until June." Then my plans changed as my mood did. Some days I would think, "I will wait until June, and then send her a short e-mail asking how she is, and if I wrote to her at a bad time." That was if I was in a good mood and really wanted to hear from her. When I felt like blaming myself, I would think, "I will wait until June, and then send her a short e-mail apologizing for bothering her, and letting her know she does not need to reply and I will not bother her anymore." And when I was in a very spiteful mood, I would think, "I will wait until June, and then send her a terse e-mail outlining how I have been waiting, but have gotten no response; how this has happened before, and I was going to just keep quiet about it as always, but I'm tired of never knowing why, so instead of waiting any longer, I will just tell her I'm sorry I wrote at a bad time, and she does not even have to reply, as I will probably be too ashamed to even read it by now."

I went over all the ways in my head to make this last e-mail sound as nonblaming as I could, but it's impossible...you've seen how I get. That whole thing is blaming! Apparently I'm even harsher than I appear to myself, based on how others have reacted to me in the past. Even when I feel badly hurt by somebody and want to lay blame, I don't want to drag them over a bed of nails. ESPECIALLY not if their silence had a true reason behind it, other than snubbing me, because then if we try to patch up again, I will just feel dreadful for ages for having treated them that way. And I really, really did want to hear back from this person. She was the only one I knew with some expertise on this subject; that was why I swallowed my anxiety and wrote to her. I don't do that, unless I really want to hear from somebody. Nowadays, most of the time I don't even bother letting somebody know if something about them interests or intrigues me (what does my opinion matter, in a potential sea of wonderful opinions?--at least, most of the people I encouraged in the past never responded, so my opinion can't be much), so when I do let somebody know, it means I really am interested.

The agonizing has grown so that it isn't even June yet but I'm starting to think about this constantly, how I should respond, if I should even bother. If I will regret it if I do, like I always seem to, but can't seem to get through my head. I really don't know what approach I should take that wouldn't make me into the monster I always turn out to be in these situations. I want to avoid doing that almost more than anything, but you've seen my lack of success at being polite and friendly when I'm hurting.

So, it has been over two months now, and the "few days" in which this person promised to write back have long passed. And I don't know how to respond to this. Should I just swallow my pain as almost always and let it go, even though I'm agonizing to know why this happened--is it my fault?--something I did wrong, or I was just a bother?--and even though I really DO still want to discuss the spiritual matter with this person? If I just give up, then I can discuss the matter with nobody, and when I had hoped to gain some enlightenment, my mind will just have to stay ignorant. I had really hoped for some knowledge on this from somebody I at least somewhat knew.

Should I send a short e-mail like my first short one, asking if she is doing well, and apologizing once again if I wrote to her at a bad time? Again giving her a way out if she wants it? I know, that apology is insinuating that she is tardy and is a way of placing blame, but I can't help but apologize. Like I said, maybe her life IS a whirlwind of never-ending emergencies and I just can't know because my life is so abnormal, I have no concept of normal life and responsibilities. For all I know I e-mail people at the stupidest times simply because I don't have a life and everyone else does. (Concrete example? Imagine me sobbing from despair and growing angry that the person I e-mailed at TWO AM doesn't happen to be online right then--or me getting mad that somebody has not replied to me over Christmas vacation because while I tend to stay at home by myself, they are visiting family like regular people do! See what I mean?) I'm willing to accept that, I just can't know for sure because nobody wants to be the one to tell me I wrote to them at a bad time, because if they did, chances are I would never write to them again. (Not out of anger, but out of shame and humiliation. If I know I'm bothering somebody, I will not write back to them, even if they say they will not be so busy sometime in the future. I just can't take the chance. I hate bothering people, even in good faith. If they want a response they have to e-mail ME first, and even then, I will not write them a longwinded e-mail like those I write when I'm feeling normal. I'll keep it as short as possible to avoid taking up their time, even if they have all the time in the world...simply because they were busy, just that once when I happened to write to them. I have a long memory when it comes to bothering people. :( )

If I follow this second approach, what if she writes back and explains herself, promises a letter, and I again do not hear from her? How often is one allowed to send tiny reminders and accept promises of an e-mail at a later time? I know I'm too impatient, but I really have no clue. With the Egyptian mythology girl, I wrote her two e-mails which she never responded to, and so I never bothered again. Two or three seems like a good number to figure out if somebody wants to write to you or not. I've reached that point here, so what do I do? Do I try again in the same way as before? And if I do, and the same thing happens--no e-mail--then what? I don't know how long I should wait, or how many delays I should expect, before I turn into some kind of freaky stalker. I do not want to be a clingy stalker person. I want to be forthright, and let someone know I wish to hear from them, but I don't want them to grind their teeth whenever they see my name in their inbox yet AGAIN. Maybe all these delays are her way of telling me to back off? I can't tell. I don't know. I don't trust my own judgement anymore. In my mind, EVERYBODY always wants me to back off, especially those who say they love to hear from me. :(

Or should I send some other kind of e-mail to let her know I really have been wishing for a reply, so we can resume our conversation? What kind of e-mail? Certainly not what my angry mood would produce--that NEVER helps. But I really don't know what I could write that would be more direct than the "How are you doing?--I'm sorry I wrote to you at a bad time" e-mail, without offending someone. Like I said, even that "I'm sorry I wrote to you at a bad time" could be seen as offensive. It practically screams, "Why haven't you written to me yet??" But I have to apologize, since something has obviously gone wrong here, and I don't know what caused it. I always have to apologize in case it's me.

How do I respond to this issue, to at least lay it to rest? I'd be disappointed and hurt if it turns out she really does NOT want to write to me, or can't because of other obligations, but that would be better than not even knowing if she plans on responding or not. I'm just so tired of never knowing. You see how it always starts to wear on me, even when I try to ignore it and just get over it. I start to feel more depressed every day, even when not consciously thinking about it. I sit in my room trying to do something I like yet my thoughts end up distracted by it and I can't enjoy anything anymore. I eventually end up crying at the stupidest times and all I can do is either keep it to myself--or explode here in Skew, or in that last rude e-mail I always itch to send. I really DON'T want to do that again.

And so what DO I do, to resolve this? I can't accept no resolution at all. If I try that...well...I will stay in this exact frame of mind forever. Except it just grows worse every day. I don't want to be so filled with spite that I'm sad, even when I don't know why. :(

And I can't even say for sure if this is why I feel so sad today. But it's at least part of the reason, I guess.

Advice IS welcome for this entry. From total strangers, or else those who I know and am on good terms with, that is. If you are somebody I have not gotten along with in the past...well...it's obvious why I don't want to hear advice from you. (But such people are few, and I should hope they haven't read this journal in a long time.)

BTW if you're somebody I've written to in at least the past few months, then no, you're not one of the people I'm on bad terms with. After getting pissed off enough I simply do not respond to those people anymore, so they should know who they are. :P

I have to go now...tar...