08-11-05 @ 10:07 am EDT

What was your purpose in e-mailing me now? If it was really to just try to get over the feeling of guilt, then I hope it worked, and you needn't read any more of this, if you even are.

If there was any other reason, then know that getting that mail made me feel lousy again. I'm angry that, in sending me that, you put the burden of replying on MY shoulders, and if I do not reply, I become the "bad guy" who does the same thing I'm always accusing others of doing, not getting back to someone. And since I have no clue why you wrote it, I have no clue what to say. I've been thinking over different approaches all night and none are right. Write something nice? Write something bitchy? Write something truthful? Tell a lie? Forgive and forget? Forgive but never forget? My intuition tells me the best approach would be simply not replying at all. But it pisses me off that I would be made to do that. I'm in a no-win situation no matter what I do.

I do not believe you are a bad person or that you did it out of spite or on purpose. So if that helps you feel any better, there it is. But at the same time I still wonder why you even wrote again at all.

In my own opinion, a friend is someone who can at least now and then tell you that they are out there. Even *I* can let the people I care about know that I'm still around, especially when they ASK if I am--and I'm the shyest person I know. Everybody who knows me knows that if much more than a month goes by without hearing from someone, I get worried and agonize over what I did wrong. To many people this is obsessive and clingy. But I've never made any secret of how I get to feeling. I have always been upfront about this so nobody gets any incorrect expectations. If somebody doesn't speak up to me in over a certain period of time, the only thing I can do for the sake of my own sanity is just believe they lost interest. And 99% of the time, this is true. At least, I never hear BACK from those people, so I have to ASSUME it's true.

I can forgive people if I know they are sincere and mean what they say. I can even be patient and wait for someone if they say something like, "I won't be able to reply to you for six months, but then I promise I'll be back"--IF they follow through. If they don't, I can forgive them once. Anything after that, it gets harder and harder to believe they mean it. But utter silence can just tell me one thing, and it's that friendship wasn't really of great importance. If that's so, then that's fine, but why people contact me and wish to be friends when it just can't work, I don't understand that.

I understand people getting busy, life getting in the way, etc. Because it happens a lot. I understand people not being able to be my friend because they are too busy or because I demand too much--happens all the time. What I do NOT understand is when people say they will be my friend and then they can't meet that obligation. Here is where people reading will consider me bitchy for putting friends under an "obligation." Well, is a friend somebody who just never contacts you anymore? I HAVE to put some sort of definition/stipulation on what I consider friends because otherwise, every stranger on the Web will be my friend. Everybody has certain expectations from friends, no matter how openminded they think they are. There are just certain things that need to be met. People already know I'm needy and clingy. I don't think it's too much for me to expect people to be there now and then.

And this isn't the first time this has happened with us, either. I fully understood the first time. If you got busy or something this time, I understand. But why an apology? That just brings the whole issue back up and leaves it open ended. And I resent open endings. You apologizing tells me that my friendship meant something to you. And that's what doesn't make sense, because you didn't have the time or inclination or something to make it work. Again--that part itself is fine. It's you apologizing that I don't get. Why do you apologize if you did not wish to be my friend? If my friendship meant as little as I had to assume it did, then you shouldn't have felt a need to say you're sorry. And so now I am very confused and angry all over again.

Apologizing to me now is like saying, "I care enough to apologize to you now, but I don't care enough to be there when you actually need somebody." I hope you can see how that really confuses me.

I even feel guilty. One of the rough drafts in my mind was to just apologize MYSELF. But I don't think that would get me anywhere. I truly do not feel I did anything wrong, no matter what my guilt says. All I ever expected was to hear from you now and then and that was all. And you knew that much.

I responded to your last mail in my journal. I figured you didn't read it, because you did not respond. In case you didn't see it, I was incredibly hurt to know that you had been reading my journal the entire time that I was feeling so awful last year, and you never said a word. It was much easier to believe that you had just stopped reading, and stopped caring, long ago. It would have even been easier to believe that you were still reading but had just stopped CARING long ago. But to write to me and tell me you had been reading, which hinted that you still cared? I can't express how badly that hurt. I even addressed you in those entries. You never said a word so what was I to think? I am a lousy friend myself, but I would have tried to be there for you, in whatever dinky way I could.

And you never said a word in response to THAT entry so again...what is with this apology? What is it you're really trying to tell me? If you just stopped caring, then just stop caring. If I demand too much to be your friend, then fine, forget about me. But sending me a reminder after months of silence that you are still out there, apparently caring, please stop doing that, because I don't even know what to say to you now. I know you're not a bad person. But I really don't know what it is that you want. You really never struck me as the kind of person who would just wish for a quick "You're forgiven" and then that's it. I got the impression that you have deeper feelings and that things linger with you; your e-mail even said as much. So I don't know what you expected from apologizing to me. It really just looked to me like you did not want my friendship. So how I'm feeling shouldn't matter to you.

And I don't even have a way to end this entry. I feel like crap. Even with as hurt as I feel right now I can't stand hurting somebody else. And I feel even stupider because who is to say you will even read this? I never knew you were reading that whole time that you were.

Maybe if I just apologize for making you feel like you had to send an apology, that would be good enough? If it helps you any, I'm sorry I made you feel guilty so that you apologized to me.