Dear Diary,

Maybe you were wondering what happened to me over the last four years. I'm sure I cannot fit it in one entry, but I will try. But it seems impossible to write about my own experience without also mentioning all the people I've interacted with, so I'll start there.

HERE ARE THE STARS OF MY DIARY.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO...

...M?
Well, here's my limited information on that. M and I have never spoken to each other again. He never returned my call from back in 2009 or 2010 or whenever that was. We still have no mutual friends, and he has a limited internet presence. The only thing I can glean is that he got his high-ranking belt in his martial arts, and he's a teacher there. So he still, as far as I can tell, lives about 2 hours from where I used to live, but that's all I've got. He basically has no digital footprint, other than some connection to his martial arts dojo. How do I feel about it? Honestly I don't think of him much, and it feels like a far-away heartache. There were some realizations I came to about him, though, that I will detail in another entry. Mostly, if he is mentioned, I refer to him as the guy I thought I was going to marry and have kids with, and since that didn't happen, it was a turning point in my life that made me realize I was never going to have kids.

...EMILY?
Emily, as I previously wrote, did leave the country to be with Mr. G. I'm not privy to the details of how they came to some arrangement- since he will never marry her, and she wasn't able to become his legal partner because she wasn't a resident. But anyway they have been together all this time, and because of her problems getting pregnant, they have two babies using his sperm and a donor's egg, which Emily was able to carry, for both babies. I hardly talk to Emily at all because of the time difference, and the fact that she has two little kids, but I get the gist that Mr. G has never really thawed... to this day he continues to be afraid of intimacy and that is a very dissatisfying arrangement for her.

...STEFFY?
Steffy moved out of the city and to a smaller town, where she and Matt bought a house. They still only have one daughter, who is almost seven. Steffy stayed home for years to raise the kid, and in the last year or so wanted to go back to work so she's started her own practice. The weird thing, for me, is that when her daughter was a year or so old, Steffy became very religious, and now seems to have strange judgments at times.

...BETHANY AND MARVA?
Bethany and I are still close. We talk often and I usually visit her once a month or so. Bethany got a job at a big corporate firm and she works long hours, but has a savings account and and IRA and probably a 401k, so she's doing better than me! Except that she's usually super stressed. Bethany recently suffered a tragedy in that she lost her apartment to a fire, and lost everything she owned in the process- but I think she's handled it quite well, getting back on her feet. Luckily she had renter's insurance and a lot of support from people at work.
Marva still lives in the city too, but honestly I know less about her now than I knew about her then. I did hang out with her maybe a year and a half ago, and as far as I can tell, she still doesn't work, and she still lives with the same guy that moved in a month after she met him... and I don't know anything else about her because she just doesn't tell. She rarely updates her FB and never contacts me first.

...B?
B broke up with his last girl, about 4 or 5 years ago... but we really stopped hanging out and talking when he met his new girl 3+ years ago (I still haven't met her). We did go out to dinner last fall, and that was the first time I'd seen him in a while.

...RED?
Red is still living far away, he did meet someone and get married. He kind of phased me out of his life. I pointed this out, and he said something like it was hard to talk to me because he missed me so much. This didn't make much sense to me, but I guess we have different attachment issues. Recently we did have a couple of phone calls, though, so that was nice. Maybe he is getting over it, 10 years later.

...HOWARD?
Howard feels like a big surprise when I say, he married his girlfriend... who by the way looks so like me, if you saw us together you'd say we were sisters... she looks more like me than my own sisters! And, they had a baby. So now Howard is... A DAD... that's crazy. He moved far away too, but we still talk on our birthdays.

...THOMAS AND GIA?
Thomas and Gia faded into the background for me. We were never really able to reconnect in any way, partly because I just didn't initiate, I suppose. I continued to have dreams about misunderstanding/confusion about not being invited to their wedding for awhile. They have two young children, and I see all the stuff on FB, but have no connection to them personally. Odd as it may seem, Gia's mom is in my class with Serena, so I do often hear about some things from her. And once last year I was actually staying with Gia's mom and we had to stop at Gia's house and drop off her kid so... I ended up having a brief conversation with Gia. She seemed a bit more mature to me, and I guessed that was a result of motherhood. I also had a brief spark of, "Oh! Maybe we could be friends again!" but when we parted I rethought it- I realized that her 'niceness' could have been another act and I really didn't know if I could trust Gia at all. She did do me a solid once by sending me some info via FB messenger, which I can detail at another time. But other than that, we don't have much communication.

...SHELLY AND TERRY?
Terry also has two young children, close in age to Gia's kids. I visited when she had the first baby, but haven't seen her in person since then. But we do send Christmas cards every year. Terry opened her own business and from what I can judge via social media, seems very successful! Since she and Gia live in the same area and have similar-aged kids, they hang out and do the mom thing together.
Shelly and Gia also seemed to have a falling out, similar to the one I had with Gia. What I gathered from Shelly's description is, at some point in relationship with Gia you come to the place where she just doesn't own her behavior. She considers vulnerability a weakness and will never apologize or admit wrongdoing, instead everything becomes twisted.. and that is what happened with Shelly. So it feels like the split with the four of us went right down the middle... Gia and Terry on one side, myself and Shelly on the other. I have kept in touch with Shelly and a few years ago, she and her husband moved a couple states away, so in a day's drive I could visit- and I have. And when Shelly got pregnant I went and stayed with her for the birth of her son. So we are pretty close!

...SHELBY?
I never did reconnect with Shelby in a dating/relational way again. He and his wife had a lot of drama going on for quite awhile, and then they had a baby. For a year or so his wife was in my class with Serena, and it was fine. At that point I had basically transitioned to Skyping into class on a regular basis, and only would go to class physically once or twice a year. When I was there, I visited her and the baby once, and another time had lunch with her. They eventually moved out of state to a beautiful property and Shelby does his work there. And now, Shelby is basically my therapist by phone. I try to schedule at least two sessions a month with him, but his schedule isn't that regular. Still, I find the work I do with him to be very helpful. And no, there isn't any weirdness about the past- I really don't miss him in that way.

...ALPHIE?
Ha, I bet you were waiting for this one! WELL. It took ten years, but someone finally blew the whistle loud enough on Alphie being a sexual predator, and, come to find out- a downright fucking rapist. One woman, bless her, somehow corralled a whole GROUP of women- about 15 or so, and maybe more, that had the SAME STORY of Alphie sexually assaulting them. However, for whatever reason, only one of those women took Alphie to court, and didn't make much of a dent. However, there was an article written about him, which was huge, and then Ben and Marie, who up to this point had been defending him (in the article it was written how Ben and Marie had enabled this behavior to go on at their seminars) had to fire him and he can't work with them anymore. So now he's trying to pass himself off as a self-help guru, but he doesn't have the capacity to counsel anyone on their emotions, since he hasn't even worked out his own. It's pretty scary considering his behavior. It's been upsetting to me because even though he's been outted as the user he always was, it seems he's just gotten a slap on the wrist. But, life isn't over yet.

...SMITTEN?
Ugh, I don't know. Back then I created a fake FB page and befriended Smitten, only to receive the same kind of communication from him- him calling me beautiful, flirting etc, it all just felt TOO familiar, and I realized that just like Alphie, he has a bag of tricks he uses on all women. I eventually unfriended him from my real-life page. I don't see Jimmy or Lalla anymore so I don't know anything about that circle.

...LOUIE?
Oddly, Louie has gained a modicum of success! Somehow Louie hooked up with the right people, and now he is some kind of teacher or coach that travels around to colleges. How that is, I don't know, because he is such an odd duck and super invasive and skeeves women. But! The world is full of miracles!

...WISCONSIN?
W? Well you know he kept disappearing and reappearing, and that time that he apologized profusely for hurting me, begged me for my number, then promptly told me he would "call in a couple of weeks". Well. I shit you not: NINE YEARS LATER, in 2029, he writes me an email in his typical style... "Hey, my bad for not getting back to you!" and then blahdeeblahdee, I can't even remember what it said because I was in AWE THAT HE WAS WRITING ME AGAIN NINE YEARS LATER DOING THE SAME THING!!! I mean really, no apology, no explanation, just a hello like he just saw me yesterday... and then into some thing about how much he admires me and we should get together blah blah blah,. I was tempted to ask him if the biofrost broke and that's why he was missing for NINE YEARS, but I chose to write nothing instead. Not a peep. No reply. And then he wrote me the next day, about how it seemed I was not responding to him, and he just wanted me to know how much he appreciated me and blahdeeblahblah, all the while insinuating that I was being petty by not responding, when all he was trying to do was love me... trying to induce a guilt trip. So, to recap, he gets NINE YEARS to think about what he wants to say, but I don't even get 24hours. How does he know it's not going to take me nine years to craft my reply? Bwhahahaha

[previous] [next]