The Reason I Don’t Write Anymore

Yeah, there is a reason I don’t really write here anymore.  While I was in Kansas, I started getting notes from who I thought was just a random diariest named Florida Flower.  She’d leave me advice, and also noted on the different entries where I’d talk about issues with Rob, or thoughts of Mike, or whatever.  And her entries sometimes centralized around "a guy she couldn’t forget," and memories that still plagued her and all this.  And the more I read those kind of entries, the more reminded of Mike I was, and the more memories of him bubbled to the surface, and I realized exactly how UN-over him I was.

It wreaked havoc in my head.  It was the reason I called him while I was in Kansas.  It was the reason that the memories I was suppressing came to the surface so violently.  It was the reason memories would hit me as hard as they did.

Oddly enough, I thought to myself from the beginning that this "random" person seemed suspiciously like someone I knew.  But I figured, no, I’m just being paranoid.  After Jacqui’s crap with the whole Phantom Diariest and then leaving me more anonymous notes about removing an entry I wrote before leaving for Kansas (and only admitting it was her when I called her out on it, saying why the Hell should I listen to some anonymous tripe,) I told myself I was just being overly suspicious, thanks to Jacqui’s immature BS.

Funny thing was, I should have listened to my instincts.  I should have removed Florida Flower from my Favorites and just ignored any further notes from her.  Because I was exactly right.  Florida Flower was Jill, the one who’d been a fair weather friend of mine until she didn’t like what I was trying to advise her about the relationship she was in.  Okay, long story very short with her:  She knew Mike, back in high school.  She liked Mike his junior year/my senior year.  Mike didn’t feel the same way at that point.  She and I began talking because Mike thought we’d make good friends since we both write.  She was hoping I’d talk to Mike and convince him to be with her.  Mike and I got together.  Fast forward about two years.  Feelings for her resurface in Mike and I tell him he’s got to see if there’s anything to them.  There wasn’t.  Or at least not strong enough that he would leave me.  Fast forward again.  Jill gets together with a guy I knew from high school named Andrew.  They’re together but have numerous different problems, not the least of which was how controlling he was with her, and how she let herself be steamrolled.  After she decided if people couldn’t be happy and rejoice in her life-destroying decisions and I was one of the people she dropped, I found out from Melanie, who’s been a friend of mine since high school and became friends with her because she was dating Andrew, who at that point was still one of her best friends, that Jill had cheated on Andrew.  She apparently felt "so guilty" about it that she avoided him for a month, then broke up with him, saying that he deserved better.  Well, they got back together for about two weeks, when she admitted she’d cheated and Andrew broke up with her.  She did the whole "no, I’m fine," thing, which blew up in her face and she tried to commit suicide in the summer of 2005, which landed her in psychiatric care.  Mid-2006 was when I finally ceased contact with Mike, because we’d been together about three years, then had a three year stasis period where I wanted to break up, he didn’t, and so we never actually told anyone we were broken up.  It wasn’t until 2007 when I came back from Kansas that I heard from Melanie that once again, Jill mentioned wanting to talk to me and ‘make things right’ between us.  We did talk  over IM, and, silly me, having convinced myself that Florida Flower was just a random person, I believed Jill and I were actually going to establish some kind of friendship.

It was 2008, I believe, that I found out from Melanie that Mike and Jill had broken up, and it was because it had come out that Jill had been cheating on him for a month.  To quote Melanie, with how long it’d been going on, "it was more like an affair."  All I can say with that is, she cheated on Andrew and lied to him about it, then was spreading lies about him that he raped her and all this.  How did it so shock Mike that she pulled the same BS with him?

Okay, so that may not have been as short as I would’ve liked.  Anyway.  Mike and I started talking again at the very end of 2008 and it was probably about a year later, in 2009, when I was in the apartment, that Mike and I were IMing or texting or something, and he told me that Jill was Florida Flower.  He not only knew about the diary, but he knew WHILE she was noting me and writing those "Oh, there’s someone I just can’t forget/stop loving" entries.  Granted, he claimed to not know what a lot of them said, but he knew she was doing it.  And as he’s said since, he saw NO PROBLEM with her doing it!  Apparently, he thought it was a "good idea" to "keep tabs on me" in case I "tried to do anything."  Now, keep in mind that most of the time I was receiving these Florida Flower notes, I was in Kansas.  KANSAS.  Half a freakin’ country away from Mike and any of the rest of them.  WHAT the HELL was I gonna do from HALF A FREAKIN’ COUNTRY AWAY?????  And you know, I’ve yet to get an answer from him on that one.

I think the worst part was when he claimed that the shrink he was talking to at the time supposedly agreed with him that it was a good idea to spy on me.  Sorry, but any therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist who says it’s a good idea to spy on someone is a fraud.  They deserve to have their license revoked and need to go back to school to learn how to properly help people, instead of giving them bogus advice like spying on someone through their girlfriend being a good idea.

Anyway.  That’s the main reason I don’t write on here anymore.  I don’t want to get rid of the diary.  I’ve had it for almost ten years now.  But e very time I sit down and think about writing an entry, I wonder who’s lurking.  I wonder who’s gonna decide to get their kicks by playing with my head.  Two people already have.  I’m not pulling the paranoid thing and wondering who’s next, but at the same time, I won’t deny, the thought’s there in the back of my mind.

And I know.  You can say I should write for myself.  But that’s the thing.  I do write for myself.  It’s called my journal.  The one I handwrite in that NO ONE sees except for me.  Okay, that’s not to say people haven’t seen excerpts; they have.  Not everyone, but some.  The point is, I write in there when I don’t want others’ eyes to see anything.  I write here, yes, for myself, but also for the people I care about on here to see it and offer up opinions, thoughts, advice, a smile, whatever.  People like Jacqui, Jill, and to a degree Mike have ultimately ruined the experience of online journaling for me.

So, yeah.  Years of my life recorded onhere, and future years are potentially ruined from being recorded because you three decided to be stupid, selfish, and thoughtless.  Thanks a lot.