remember the time when i cried and cried

6:20 PM 1/24/11

I'm going to retell a story. This happened between me and Curtis. It was last year sometime, in 2010.

They forced me to steal his cell phone number and start texting him. I knew from the beginning that this was a bad idea and I didn't want to do it. I actually went out and bought a new Tracfone so that I could text him, because the Tracfone that I normally use is several years old, and it's been hacked or messed up or something so that it can only receive texts but cannot send any, in spite of my trying to fix it in the tech support section of the web page.

Anyway I had texted him and he usually ignored me (or wasn't getting them), but once in a while he would randomly answer. Every once in a while they forced me to ask him, 'Are you getting my text messages?' and he would say no, he wasn't getting them. I would then push and ask the same question again, are you sure, are you serious, you're NOT getting them, while getting myself more worked up and upset about it, almost crying, and he would continue to say no, he didn't get the text messages (and then he called me his - I'm going to cry if I talk about this. he called me his special nickname, which is why I start bawling every time Pink sings 'you called me sugar' in 'glitter in the air', and no, the name wasn't sugar).

So one time, he was actually answering, and we texted back and forth in a semi-conversation for a couple of minutes.

Then there was either 1. a misunderstanding because of the limitations of texting and not being able to clarify people's meanings, or 2. we got hacked. Something weird happened.

He sent me a message that said something confusing and out of context, which had nothing to do with the message that I had just sent him. It was irrelevant. It said 'You hear voices you give me notes wtf I know this nicole.' It was as if he had just gotten a text message from me repeating something I had said earlier, as though my first text message had been resent to him. I didn't understand why he was saying that, so I had to try to guess what was going on.

And I don't recall the exact words, but I have them written down somewhere in my paper journal (they're not on the phone itself anymore because I ran out of space for saved messages and had to delete the oldest ones, so I wrote them on paper), and I could look it up if I wanted to. He said something that sounded like he didn't want to get a note from me. I might have misinterpreted it.

Then he stopped answering or texting. And I didn't try texting him. I didn't understand what was going on.

I spent the whole afternoon crying in agony with a pain in my chest as though my heart was being ripped out. I don't recall the details of what he said but it sounded like a final rejection, like 'leave me alone, stop stalking me,' whatever, that kind of thing.

But I had to go to work that night. I cried for a really long time. Then I went to work and I saw him at work.

He came up to me right away and asked me, 'Do you have a note for me?' I said, 'No! You told me not to!' and then he gave me a sort of horrified, oh-my-god-this-is-weird look, and walked away. Obviously, he was just as surprised by this as I was. He hadn't actually said whatever I thought he said.

So either we had a terrible misunderstanding, or else we got hacked, but whatever it was, like I said, I cried in agony for hours and hours and felt that my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

Because of my knowledge of hacking, I know that if anything strange happens, and it involves either 1. computers, 2. cell phones, 3. regular phones, or 4. people being forced to speak as puppets - because I know about this, I know not to do the Romeo-and-Juliet thing. I always said that Romeo and Juliet was a stupid play, and why would anyone in their right mind ever *LIKE* this play, from the very first time that I read it. I said they were idiots and I swore that I myself would never, ever be as stupid and idiotic as they were. And now that I've learned about hacking, I know that people can get hurt very, very badly by misunderstandings or by malicious interference, when, in reality, Juliet is only asleep because of a sleeping potion, or whatever it is that happened. However, I still get hurt very badly. There is a part of myself that knows that it could've been caused by malicious interference, but I still get hurt very badly.