So that hiatus of mine didn't last very long, but I wouldn't say that my diary sabbatical is over. In some way, I'm not fully back, but I am compelled to write, so here we go.
I don't have any sense of organization right now, so there may not be any order to what I am about to write. I'm just spewing, venting, and letting my thoughts materialize into words, words that I will be sharing with whoever chooses to read this. Consider me right now, in some way, a bundle of emotions, most of which are negative and painful. I will likely experience all kinds of emotions, the majority of which will be painful, as I write this.
In November 2024, I met this woman on another diary website. She seemed quiet, meek, and later, she proved to be quite the introvert. I was almost immediately drawn to her. We connected over something that most people likely would not find any kind of connection to. Without going into too much detail, we connected over sex toys. Oddly, from there, our friendship blossomed. As it turned out, so would our feelings.
About a year ago, we moved our friendship from that diary website to exchanging e-mails. Eventually we progressed from e-mail to text messaging and phone calls. In some weird way, it felt like we were becoming friends, best friends even, if I'm being honest. We had transcended the realm of the online and the internet to almost something that was real on all levels. Now, one of the other barriers that we faced was that we were not living that close to each other. We were separated by about 1200 miles and a time zone that put us an hour apart. Still, we persevered. We would text daily, engaging in conversations about our day, things that were happening in our respective worlds, and about life in general. Suffice to say, that we connected. We bonded. We became really close. I cared for her. She cared for me. Sure, we had our trials and tribulations, as friends sometimes do, but we always found a way to talk it over and resume the beautiful friendship/relationship that we had forged. We had become a part of each other's lives and it was wonderful.
Now, enter last Sunday (06/07). We were texting each other that morning, just as we had always done. It was like any other day. I happened to call her out for what I had perceived to have been an odd shift in her tone, though in the end, I thought nothing of it and we continued talking. The last text message she sent me was a simple:
❤️
It was not unusual for us to communicate using emojis. That was just something that we did and we would do it a lot some days. I found that using emojis could say so much when we didn't have the time or ability to type out full sentences and at least with her, using emojis had become second nature.
Her final text message to me would come into my phone at exactly 9:00am.
A minute later, I sent her this:
🧡
A few hours later, I sent her what would be the final text message ever between us, just before 12pm. I told her that I was done working for the day, which was my way of telling her that I was done working and that we could engage in a text conversation if she wanted. This was typical for us. We'd talk, day in and day out. That was our normal and it felt good.
Inexplicably, she went silent for the rest of that Sunday afternoon and that evening.
Monday came. Nothing. Tuesday came. Nothing. You see a pattern developing here? I did. As far as I was concerned, she was missing. Something was wrong here, very wrong. I found myself starting to panic. I didn't know what was going on. Had something sinister happened to her? Was she hurt? Sick? Dying? Dead even? I had no idea and it scared the hell out of me. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what I COULD do.
So, Wednesday, the silence continued and into Thursday morning, it went. Finally, on Thursday morning at 9:44am, I made my first of a few phone calls to her.
Nothing. no answer. I don't recall if I did it this during this call, but at one point, I left her a message, asking her if anything was all right and that she reach out to me, either by return call, text, or even through the PB comment system.
Again, nothing.
I spent a good part of Thursday evening doing some research online, thinking of ways I might be able to find my friend and confirm that she was okay. By "find", I mean that I wondered if I might be able to find information about her and even possibly family and personal connections to her. I don't know how much time I spent on this, but amidst my research, I found myself delving deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that is her.
Without going into any excruciating or even minimal detail, I'll just say this. A lot of what I had stumbled upon online was inconsistent with a lot of what she had told me about herself. Even as I write this, I am still in a state of confusion because I found so much information about her that didn't make sense to me.
Then Friday was upon us and we were close to going an entire work week in silence. I struggled to get through the work day because my mind was definitely not focused on work and what I had hoped to get done that day. I grabbed a quick lunch in the community and proceeded to park at the local post office to eat and contemplate my next move.
Remember that research I had done on Thursday night? Well, I was confident that I had found what I believed was her sister's phone number. After I had struggled to eat my bland bean burrito, i stared at my phone. I thought long and hard about it.
Do I make this call?
What if I'm wrong and this isn't her sister?
What if I'm right and it is?
What do I say?
Can I go through with this?
Eventually, I said:
Fuck it. Let's do this.
I called the number and after ringing a few times, it went to voicemail. I didn't leave a message. I had intended to call back and if I didn't get anyone, then I'd leave a message, as awkward as it might have sounded.
Six minutes later, my phone rings. I recognize the number immediately. It's the same number I had just dialed, only now, they were calling me.
Hello?
The caller, a man, tells me that he has a missed call from "this number". So, I quickly assessed the situation, assumed that this was my friend's brother-in-law (her sister's husband), and went into my plea, for lack of a better term.
I'm paraphrasing here:
You don't know me, but I'm calling you from Southern California. I'm one of her close friends. I met her on a blogging website in November 2024 and we became friends. We talk daily. We last texted this past Sunday and I haven't heard from her since. I know this is going to sound like a weird call (I think I said this two or three times during this brief two-minutes phone call), but I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. I don't care if she doesn't want to speak to me anymore, but I just want to know that she's okay. Can you let me know if she is?
In what I will describe as an unusual, though not necessarily surprising exchange, he doesn't hit me with any kind of tone that I would classify as being anything even remotely understanding. He was understandably guarded.
Who?
I give him her first name and tell him that I "have her down" as having two possible last names. I don't know which surname she currently goes by.
He then says something to the effect of:
Yeah, I'll take a look into it and I'll get back to you.
There wasn't much I could do at that point. I thanked him for his time and apologized for the awkwardness of the call, advising that he could either call me or text me when he finds out.
As of this writing, he has not contacted me. He's not going to either.
I didn't sleep well last night, but I still got to the office at my usual 4:45am. I tried calling her closer to 5:45am her time, just as I parked. Three times in succession. Nothing. I went into the office and did as much work as I could with an increasingly heavy heart and a clouded and preoccupied brain.
Just after 8am, she finally reached out to me through the PB comment system:
Don't call any of my family members again.
What the fuck is that all about? Here I am, worrying nearly to fucking death that something bad and/or catastrophic had happened to her and this is the "comment" that she sends me. Desperation makes you do things and yes, yesterday I found myself in that very state of desperation. Forgive me for caring as much as I did.
For over three hours, we would communicate through the PB comment system. I tried calling her, only to discover that her phone was now all of a sudden "no longer in service". Strangely, I could still text her, but I would never get any response, at least not a response I could use.
These were the responses that I'd get from her number:
--This phone number is no longer in service.
--STOP
--#STOP
--#leave
Even as I write this, I can still send text messages to her number. Whoever was on the other end has since stopped replying, so yes, in some way, I've been talking to myself. I'll eventually stop texting that number, because it seems pointless to keep sending texts when no one is replying.
So, back to our "conversation" through the comment system...
Without posting everything that we talked about, I'll just say this. I'll try to summarize our exchange.
She tells me that:
--she has to go and that she "won't be on here anymore".
--I should just let her go.
--a second time, that she has to go.
--she loves me and that she always will.
--she will always love me and that I should never forget that.
--she is sorry that she can't stay, but that I will always have her heart entirely.
--she hopes that I don't stop writing poetry.
--she loves me and that she never needed to see my face to know that she loved me.
--she's sorry and that she has to go.
--she has to go.
Mixed into everything that she said, I tell her that:
--I didn't understand why she was doing "this", including disconnecting her phone and no longer allowing me to see her entries here on PB.
--I didn't understand why she had to "cut me off like this".
--I want her to talk to me. I would say this to her multiple times.
--this isn't right and that "it's not fair".
--maybe it doesn't matter anymore, but that I cared for her and that I had feelings for her.
--this all hurts like she wouldn't believe.
--I might need to leave PB behind myself. She was the reason why I ended up here in the first place.
--I don't know if I can just let her go.
--ending things like this doesn't feel right.
--she herself had always me, "Don't leave me", yet, here she was doing that very thing.
--she doesn't have to go.
--"for what it's worth...I love you". Yes, I finally said it, even though my timing could not have been any worse.
--she made me fall in love with her and I did.
--I was begging her to please talk to me.
--maybe I should have told her sooner that i loved her.
--I'm texting her in vain.
--I never really wanted to cut her out of my life. We got really close and to see it all end, it kills me.
--I'm done with poetry.
--I blame myself for what was happening.
I tended to repeat myself throughout, but you get the point. I'll say that for every one comment she would leave me, I would send her six of seven in response.
I never wanted her to leave. I still don't. I want her back.
So, it was never my intent to drop names or drop any specific information from my week's research, and I'm going to stick to that. Still, some of you might notice that a certain diarist might have suddenly disappeared from the site and if you want, you can blame me for her leaving PB. I do blame myself for everything that has happened and I will carry that burden with me for the foreseeable future.
As of this writing, her diary is still up, but I can't really say for how much longer that'll be the case. As for me, I can't read her entries anymore. She deleted her profile picture. My bookmark for her remains active, but at this point, I don't think that means anything anymore.
I still have a lot of questions, which at this point, I don't think I'll ever have answered.
I wonder if I hadn't done what I did and reach out to her family to see if she was safe, would she still be here? Was I the one staring down the barrel of that gun as I pulled the trigger? Why did I have to care so fucking much anyway? Why did she just disappear on Sunday the way she did? Did I do something to upset her last Sunday? What really happened to her that day? This past week? Like I said, so many questions.
I'm not sounding dramatic when I say this. A part of me died today and it is tearing me up inside.
I'm sad. I'm down. I'm nearing what some might even label as depression. This hurts so fucking much.
I don't have any other recourse at this point. I can't call her. I can't text her. All I can do is write this entry and tell the world how I feel.
World, thank you for reading.
As for her, this is all I can muster at this point...
Whenever in the world she might be, there's not much more I can tell her, so I'll just say this.
I love you 🧡
😘😘😘
Loading comments...