9-16-01 - 10:45 p.m.

I feel so down right now I just want to die. Not kill myself. Just suddenly cease to exist. Maybe it's selfish of me to think about my sorrows when all this terrorist Pentagon/World Trade Center crap is still fresh and horrible, but I don't care. It doesn't change the fact that I'm contemplating never waking up tomorrow. Again, I'm not going to kill myself. I just plan on going to sleep and not waking up. But my plans never work out the way I want them to, so don't worry.

Earlier tonight I had a terrible craving for alcohol. I asked an online friend to tell me I didn't need a drink. He said, "You don't need a drink. Neither do I, but I had a little bit earlier." (Paraphrased, of course.)

Mind you, this is someone who has had maybe ten drinks his entire life. So he can't be expected to know what it's like to be addicted, except that we've been talking for four years and he's known about my alcoholism for almost three and has heard me explain how it works to him about three billion times. So you would think he could at least pretend.

Anyway, so I said, "Don't tell me that!!" and he apologized. After two or three lines of small talk, he told me that he'd downed a Seagram's wine cooler, some berry-flavored thing. He said, "It was goooooooooood..." and my jaw hit the floor.

How dare he?! This is supposed to be one of my closest friends, and he's gloating? About something like that?!

I said, "Do you know how much you're not helping?" and he apologized again and immediately changed the subject.

That really hurt and angered me. He knows how fragile I am, how hard it is for me to keep from drinking, how much his opinion matters to me.

Somewhere along the road he and I grew apart. I wish I could say it was gradual, but I don't think it was. I see that it happened very shortly after our very brief relationship ended. It was at this time that I entered my "Complete Bitch Phase," a period of about four months during which I didn't give a damn about anything or anyone and didn't hesitate to let people know what a hateful, angry girl I was. He didn't like this "new me" and began to avoid me. We argued almost every time we talked. He believed that I could just snap my fingers and be the sweet, good little angel girl I once was. But I never was that. I only pretended to be that so I could make friends. He knew that. I had confessed my false personality a year before this. I tried many times to explain to him that, if it was as easy as snapping my fingers, I'd have done it a decade ago.

After I came home from Bayview, I found that he wanted to act like I had never been there. He had seen Girl, Interrupted and assumed that my experiences were exactly like the protagonist Susanna Kaysen's. One day I finally summed up the courage to tell him that I wished he had asked me about it instead of acted like it had never happened. He said he thought I didn't want to talk about it, and when I pointed out that he never even so much as bothered to find out, he clammed up and changed the subject.

I don't know what happened, but I know it's my fault. In this friendship, he made it clear that everything we argue about is my fault. He never once has apologized for a single thing. He'll say "Sorry" when it's convenient and to save his ass from my "wrath," but when it comes to big things like making me feel as though I matter to him, there's nothing. And so I end up feeling as though I don't matter to him. In three years he hasn't done a single thing to make me think otherwise.

Still, when something that seems trivial to me but is a huge deal for him happens, I'm there. Some call it loyalty. Some call it stupidity. It's probably a mixture of the two, more the latter than the former, I think.

That's just how I am. I don't leave people. I can't leave them. People matter to me. Believe it or not, I'm a very affectionate and loving person, once you get to know me. When I make a Friend, I intend on keeping that Friend for life.

It has come to the point where, on Instant Messenger, I have to send the first message to him, even if he comes online long after I've been there. Now, I have my sounds turned off because I'm always listening to music very loudly, and somehow, the AIM sounds are always ten times louder than the music and otherwise they're bound to give me a heart attack sooner or later. He won't say hello to me first because he's never sure I want to talk. But again, he won't ask because...I don't know. Maybe he feels like I'm a charity case, and he only talks to me to make himself feel better, the way people go to feed the homeless only on Thanksgiving, when it's convenient.

If the person I'm talking about is reading this, he'll know it's him. And he'll get defensive and deny all I've said. He's too proud, too macho, to ever apologize to me. He's above apologies. And I'm not worthy of them, in his mind.

I wish I was brave enough to let him go. I've tried, actually. I sent him a a six-paragraph "goodbye" message on ICQ, which, as Kellie later told me, he didn't even bother to read. Why? It was too long.

It took me SO MUCH courage to write those words. I remember that, as I was writing it, my hands were shaking. I had to take a few breaks to breathe deeply because I couldn't believe what I was doing. I thought it was the right thing, and wanted to do it to save my sanity, but it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, friendship-wise.

And he didn't even read it.

That hurt so much I cried, though it wasn't the first time he had made me do so. I take my friendships very seriously, online and off. My friends are everything to me.

I just don't get it. All I want is an apology or for him to tell me, in all sincerity, that I matter to him, that I mean something to him. Others can say it, but I need to hear it from him. And I know I won't unless it's said forcefully, like it will be now, complete with huffs and rolled eyes.

I've said things like this to him a million times. And it never fails. He never apologizes, never owns up to his part in our drift. It's not entirely my fault, though he'd love to believe that.

I have a theory, which is that I believe he still thinks I'm the hideous person I was during my Complete Bitch Phase. But that was more than a year ago. I've come a long way since then, no thanks to him. I want to share my successes with him, but I never even have his full attention. I haven't had his attention since 1998. Now, on the rare occasions when we talk and not argue, he's always doing something else and clearly has no interest in talking to me. His answers are almost always one or two words long, typed so rapidly and carelessly that his typos are difficult to interpret, and he just seems distant all the time. I do several things at once, too, but I don't hold off for ten minutes before answering, because that's rude. But I've been patient for two years while he has done that to me.

I know that this part of the problem is my fault. I let him get to me. I let him hurt me, very deeply. But part of me still considers him a close friend, and can't believe he would ever treat me so terribly.

I miss him. I miss him a lot. But I can't keep pretending he doesn't hurt my feelings every time we talk. I don't want to keep forcing our friendship on him. I'll just try to let him go. Again.

If I was smart, I'd have done this long ago. And if I wasn't such a wuss, I'd actually stick to it.

I hate myself tonight. But I won't tomorrow.

I do miss you, Friend. I just wish you missed me.

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