gratitude, a casual friendship request, an indirect letter to someone who's not easy to communicate with

i don't feel well today. i've been sick, moody, and depressed in the past couple days.

last time you saw me, you gave me a cold, distrusting look. or that is what i saw.

i don't like 'using' other people to communicate with you. there are some people who i don't know very well, and a while back i asked one of them to give you a note. she did, but i felt like it's wrong to just ask her to do favors for me, when we don't really hang out together, and i can't do anything useful to help her in return. i was grateful that she helped.

the note was too long. it was months and months of bottled-up things that i was trying to tell you in email. i sent you, maybe, over forty emails - i would need to check again to make sure that's how many it was. i received five from you. we also had a couple of phone calls before you stopped talking to me. but i wasn't comfortable trying to call you on the phone and leave messages on your voice mail, so i didn't call you. i could not hide the sound of my hurt feelings, in my voice, and it was easier to type letters instead.

again, i really do feel sick today and i don't normally write a blog in the second person pronoun directed at a specific person, but today i was in the mood to write that way.

i'm doing some things to try to meet new people. this is important, because it really is difficult to communicate with you, and i don't know what the problem is, and i don't know what kinds of things are okay to do, and what isn't okay to do. so hopefully, i won't need to be chasing after a guy who is trying to avoid me, because i am going to make friends with other people.

i still don't know if our emails got hacked - i know it sounds stupid, but i still have to wonder about that. i really didn't get anything except about five emails from you.

for whatever reason, you weren't able to explain to me how you felt or what was wrong. maybe you felt sorry for me. maybe you were afraid of me. maybe i gave you the creeps. i told you the truth: i really do hear voices in my head telling me things, and i really do experience alternate personalities that say things through me. you and i might interpret that differently - i don't know how you interpret it, because i wasn't able to ask you.

i was grateful that you wrote me back a note, even though it was very brief, and it was cold and hurtful to me, and it didn't explain enough or answer enough of the questions that i had. so, i had mixed feelings. but i was grateful just to get some kind of answer from you.

i think that sometimes you experience some of the things that i experience - but i don't know you very well, and i'm just guessing. maybe sometimes, people say things as though they 'know' something about you, some secret that they should not have been able to know. if i ever did that to you, please understand that it was an accident. if not, there's nothing to worry about. like i said, i hardly know you at all.

i can't look at your blog - either you, or 'they,' somebody made it so that i can't go to that page anymore. so, i won't know what's going on in your life.

i don't feel safe, if i keep trying to contact you, or send you little handwritten notes by giving them to your friends to pass along to you, because that is a strange way of talking to someone, and anything unusual could be construed as some kind of 'harassment,' which i don't want to have happen. it's confusing, because when i see you in person, your behavior tells me that something is wrong, but i don't know how to interpret it. you sometimes look sad or hurt, other times suspicious and distrusting.

i'd ask you to just be a casual friend, or an online friend, and it wouldn't be a big deal. that's a sort of ongoing request. i'd also like to have a clear 'no' whenever you need to say no. i'm still asking you to please, if you can, reply or send an email so that we can talk - we could at least set boundaries of what type of communication is appropriate or not appropriate. i don't know what to assume about email, because your note mentioned nothing about that. i don't know if you get emails or not when i send them, and i don't know if you've tried sending me any and i haven't received them.

and yes, i'm looking for other friends, but it's making me remember you. i enjoyed our couple of conversations, as brief as they were, and i was grateful that you answered me, even if it was only a couple of times.

maybe you think that i'm crazy, or dangerous, weird, or overwhelming. i'm not normal, i'll agree with that. but i've had many friends over the years, and whenever they set boundaries (such as 'don't call after a certain hour because i'm sleeping,' etc) i respect those boundaries. much of my conflict and uncertainty about you is that you HAVEN'T told me clearly what you don't want me to do. yes, it hurts when you say 'no' to people - it hurts a lot - but i will survive it, and i will be grateful to know exactly what those limits are, so that i can respect them. it would be especially helpful when the time comes that i will be using my herbal antidepressant - right now, i haven't been using it, because it isn't growing in the winter - but i'm concerned that i'll get those urges to send you another email or try to tell you things again, and it bothers me that i just DON'T KNOW if it's okay to send you emails.

and when i talk about conspiracy theories like 'some hacker stole our emails,' i'm really serious about that, because i have been harassed by 'hackers' (i know that's not really the right word for them, but it's convenient) for quite a long time now, and i know that they can interfere in people's relationships and their communications, for their own reasons. this really happens. it's confusing not to know whether you can even email me or not.

i think that's most of what i wanted to say. my letters are always too long.

whatever is going on in your life, i hope you're doing okay. good luck. i am still here. if you ever want to say anything to me, i will listen.