Philotic Web

DEAR DIARY/JOURNAL/BOB was an experiment I began at pweb a few years ago, in which we would create a place for people to just VENT. A place to tell someone about their day. A place where nobody will judge you.

Sometimes people are bursting with something they need to tell someone about, but don't, because they don't think anyone would care. Here, we care.

In it's previous carnation, BOB was a tremendous success - I started with a hyper-long Journal entry, wondering if it would ever be read in its entirety. Well, it was, and others soon follwed suit and posted their own entries.

People soon felt very comfortable talking to BOB, and the thread took on a life of its own.

So it's with great honor that I reinstate BOB over here at Pweb's new forum. He's back, and he's ready to listen.

Let's get talking.

Dear Bob,

I've missed you.

Dear Bob,

I've missed you, too. This place looks strange and kind of foreign. It will take a little while for me to get used to it. But until then, I've still missed you.

~Rei

Bob, it's going to take a while before I stop whimpering and emerge from my corner. But I'm glad you're back.

Dear Bob 3.0,

I prefered the previous version.

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Yes it will. Just like a healthy coat of Ewok fur...

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Dear Bob
School is a pain, I am not doing as well as I would like in my classes and they are still getting harder.

Dear Bob,

I think the (semi)return of pweb has been the one good thing in an incredibly s***** day. I don't really have time right now, but I'll talk to you later.

Ethan

Dear Bob,

*big huge tight hug that somehow explains everything*

Oh, that felt good. I missed you.

Nicole

Hey there Bob .... Aren't you glad to know you're so appreciated? Everyone wants to talk to you! Everyone wants to be your friend!

If you get sick of us, just remember, we all left you alone for quite a while.

Dear Bob,

I think I've discovered a renewed apprecation for you. It seems I was taking you for granted, but then I lost you and now you're back and it's really quite a lot nicer than I expected. Go figure.

~Rei

Dear Bob,

PWeb has been reborn for what, 24 hours? A little more? A little less?

And already, I am whining.

I feel sick. I feel sick in the real, literal, sick sense of the word. By which I mean, I have a fever of some unspecified degree, I have a hacking cough, I have no voice, and my head hurts. As a result, I am missing class, and I should be going to class.

I hope to god I feel better by tomorrow, because my parents are going away, and I'm going to have to take care of my brother. Which will be hard to do if I'm bedbound.

On top of that, I'm just generally feeling depressed. There's nothing massive, just all these little tiny things that keep building up and bothering me more than they should be bothering me and make me feel really, really down.

I wanted to talk to someone about it last night, but that someone was, predictably, busy until I gave up and just decided to go to sleep.

I mean, again, there's nothing serious that's causing me to feel down, it's just dozens of tiny little things that are all clumped together and keep punching me in the stomach over and over and over. And there are some people I wish would just cease to exist because their existence makes me sad.

And I'm sad. And I'm sick.

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...

Dear Bob,

I don't know if I want to be a psychologist when I grow up anymore. I think maybe I don't have the people skills. Or the emotional pain tolerance. And I'm kind of wondering what my life would be like if I'd found something different -- if I'd taken time to find something instead of wandering into grad school.

Dear Bob,

Tell me what it is that I am to do.
I love her. I always will. No amount of sour things she can do to me can change this. I don't care if she comes at me with a knife. I don't care if she sends me anthrax in the mail. I don't care if she becomes a porn star and has sex with 50 other guys. I'll still love her. I love her unconditionally.

She hurt me really badly. I'm really scared she'd do it again. Everyone, including my (cheating) father, keeps saying things like "If she cheated once she'll do it again." Now I'm aware that technically she didn't cheat, but wanting the guy, fighting against me for him, fighting against spending time with me when I really needed it to spend time with him, and then making out with him only hours after calling me to break up with me (because I needed her time and that pissed her off).....same diff. She says she regrets it. She says she realizes it was a mistake. She says she should have given me the attention I needed when I Was begging for it. She says nothing like this would ever happen again....but....do I believe her?

How can I believe her when she used to promise all this before too? She used to swear she'd never be attracted to anyone else. She used to swear she'd never want anyone but me....but...she did.
How am I to believe that she won't?

Yet.....yet I do, somehow. I want her back. I will take her back, if she wants, eventually.

I don't think I should now though....
I think it's too soon....

I think she needs the experience with him....I think she needs to experience the full relationship with him before she can appreciate the one that we had...

I think she needs the experience of knowing that I'm not waiting for her. I think she needs to feel, and deal with, the pain of thinking that (almost) all the things that we used to hold special to one another.....the things that we had only shared with one another....have now been shared elsewhere. I think she needs to feel that to appreciate the actual intimacy of them between us, and realize how little the physical action is without that intimacy, and how much more the intimacy matters.

I need the same.

I think we need to wait to try again.

But...but I don't want to wait. I HATE waiting, as can be evidenced by our (apparantly too much so) fasttracked relationship. I miss her so much....I miss being with her, I miss having her - even if only on AIM, I miss calling her mine, I miss seeing that ring on her finger, I miss telling her how much I love her, I miss looking at wedding locations, I miss thinking about our future together, I miss picturing her in a beautiful white gown standing in front of me, I miss thinking about our kids, our house, our family, and our life; I miss US. I WANT IT BACK.

I swore I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't go back. I swore to my mom I wouldn't make her mistake. I swore to myself I wouldn't let myself be swayed. I swore to my friends that I was done with it....but I'm not.

I love her. I want her. I need her.
I just don't think it's time, yet....
But maybe it is...
I just don't know.

Bob, what do I do?
Help...

Sorry Dap, wish I could help.

Dear Bob,

I love her but she can't see that her stupid friend is trying to rip us apart. Help me, Bob.

Dear Bob,

I very very missed you. I'm glad you're back.

That said, I have some rambling to do.

Guess how my parents' divorce is going? It's been five months and we still don't know if it's going to be tried in Here or There. My sisters are still stuck with my most loving mother and they'll stay there until their eighteen, probably.

Guess what else?

Yesterday she told me it really, really was my fault and she went into great detail as to why.

Everone has been telling me all along that no, of course it's not my fault, children can't break up their parents' marriages. Everyone. Everyone is wrong. She said that my dad loved me too much so he stopped loving her and that is why, essentially. I stole my father from my mother. Freud would have a party, I think (which is not mentioning that the current love of my life reminds my dad of how he was when he was at school here, etc.)

Boys are so stupid. Last week I turned down three. Three, Bob. Boys! This is terrible. The real reason, when you come down to it, is that I want this other boy that I probably will never have. Great. I feel awful for telling them no, this one was just so honest about it. Maybe it's a manipulation tactic or maybe that's how he is but I thought it was refreshing. I'm sick of not knowing what boys think, exactly, and hearing things from people who heard it from people who heard it from people who can't say who they heard it from. Or having everyone else know that you like each other before you do. Obnoxious. Why do things work out this way? In other stupid high school dramaish boy news, my ex-boyfriend is currently in he thinks love with my ex-roommate, with whom I am in love (/hate). She is prohibited by her own rules from doing anything with him because he's almost two years younger than she is and he dated her probably best friend here. Maybe that's arrogant of me to say, but I think it's the truth.

I've been doing a lot of writing recently. I'm taking a fiction class, which is kind of strange, considering I generally write poetry and consider myself much better in that realm. I've been doing fairly well in that class, just applying my, uh, razor sharp wit and dry, sarcastic humor? Or something, my teacher likes my style in general. My most recent masterpiece is the story of a woman with avoidant personality disorder who falls in love with a man who has gender identity disorder. They don't exactly fit the disorders that I've given them, but I'm figuring that no one in my class knows enough to know that. I'm hoping.

I never have time to talk to anyone anymore.

And now I don't have any more time to talk to you. Sometime soon, I hope.

Love,
Abbie

Bob,

I just got off the phone with my girlfriend. We only talked for about two minutes but I loved hearing her voice. I love her so much. I am just so confused.

me

I'm sick of not knowing what boys think, exactly

Just try to keep in mind that it would probably drive you insane if you always knew what we were thinking.

Dear Bob,

I find college a bit easier once you identify classes that are a waste of time and then stop going to them. It was hard the first week for me to shake the idea that even if listening to a professor talk about something you already knew was pointless, you still go... 'cause, come on, it's class. I'm glad I no longer think like that.

-me

Dear Bob,

Please let today be better than I dread it'll be?

Dear Bob,

I got moved up to Varisty Volleyball!! i'm so happy, kinda embarrassed actually. i suck at practice. but i actually got to play in yesterday's game for like 5 minutes. i probably would've played front row, but Monica's better at blocking. What really sucks is JV, i went down to play cuz they still needed me, negative energy there. Or...there was one girl who just can't keep her head up and shake mistakes off. It's real annoying. Both Varisty and JV have mental lapse in between games. we play well, we just lose focus. Have another game on Friday, hopefully we'll win, but i dont think we will.

Dear Bob,

I'm trying to decide if I like the fact that my face is so very readable. Like, seriously. People just KNOW when something is on my mind, amusing or pissy or disappointed or confused or whatever. In group supervision last week, we were doing check-ins and we'd finished, and our supervisor was saying, "Is there anything else? Going once, going twice" and I had something I wasn't sure if I wanted to bring up, so I didn't say anything but I was thinking that, "Oh, wow, I'm actually going to get away with not saying anything." and I'm sure that was the expression that filled my face because suddenly my supervisor looks at me and says, "Oh, so there IS something else!" and I was so mad. I was saying, "oh s***. s***. s***. s***. Damnit." Anyways, that led to a brief discussion of my facial expression stuff (one of my classmates telling me how much he'd love to get me to play poker with him). And, to follow up, a couple of days later I was having lunch with the same professor and a friend, and we got back on that topic. I was proofreading something the professor had written and that I didn't particularly like and my friend picked it up right away. I was like, huh? And then my professor told me that when she lectures, she can actually just track my moods throughout the class period. And my friend told me that back when we first entered grad school and she sat across the room from me, she used to watch me during class and wonder what I was thinking. So, professor reframes it as, "It's good to be genuine." Which I tell her is a nice reframe. And since that conversation, I've been noting the way that I just cannot hide my expressions. Like today. My supervisor (on-site, not the one I was talking about before) tells me that a WAIS-III has been ordered. And internally, I am JUMPING up and down. I was chomping at the BIT. And he starts to ask, "Would you like to..." and as he's asking, he's laughing, and I know it is all OVER my face. So, okay, that's fine.

But then during the actual administration, I'm really wondering how many times the person I was giving the test to could see if she was right or wrong by looking at me.

And when I'm polite to people but angry with them, they act like my anger is far more out of control than it is by my tone of voice or what I actually say (and I never speak in anger when there's a chance it will get out of control.) They refer to what they see in my face. And I think that they're wrong... but.

Genuine? I don't know if that's what it is. I got used to hiding my emotions for a lot of years, and it seems like now that they're unhid, they're REALLY unhid. I don't know if I like being this transparent.

Anyways, just wanted to ramble.

Bob,

Nothing feels solid. I have three "homes", but none of them feel right anymore. I have some amazing best friends, but I don't feel that close to them anymore. I don't have things planned out when they really need to be right now. Nothing feels familer anymore. I really need something that's constant in my life, even just something small will help.

Dear Bob,

Darren is having trouble. Big trouble like I used to have. I told him that and he essentially said that it wasn't the same. He didn't know me during the time that I was talking about, but of course that doesn't matter. This is the boy who honestly considers himself to be superior to every other human that he has ever met. He is right and no one understands. I told him last night that I just really want to help him and that I want him to feel better.

We had a plan to just hang out with a few people tonight, the two of us and someone he could be comfortable with so he might have a somewhat good time with people. Very very small group, just people who care about him. Good plan, right? Well, my ex-roommate decided that she was going to leave dinner with him instead of me, knowing full well what my plans were.

Never mind, Bob, I've told the story twice. Forget it.

This is what I have to say:

I'm a s***** Jew, I'm a s***** daughter, I'm a s***** student and advisee and team player and person and now I'm such a s***** friend that I try to help and all it gets me is... I don't know what it's gotten me, I can't help anyone. I can't help anyone, Bob, I am worth nothing.

Dear Bob,

I don't know how to deal. I just don't.

I don't know the right answer.

I don't know how to cope properly

I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

I don't want her, but I love her and I want her back.

I don't want to leave her, but I know that I can't take being back with her.

I don't want to be that a****** I always hated; but I know she deserves no better anymore.

I don't want to run away, but I can't stand and watch what she's doing.

I don't want to be a changed man, be the person I never was before, be anyone but the person she stopped loving.....but I feel so changed, so jaded, and like I can never be that person, love like that, or feel like that ever again.

I don't want to be Cameron anymore.

I don't want to be at all.

Help me, Bob....

--Cam

Howdy, Bob,

So he left the bar with a random girl last night, which was annoying. I was supposed to give him a right home. How am I supposed to seduce him if he leaves with other girls, hrm? Difficult man. In other news, I shouldn't be attempting to seduce men when I still have a boyfriend. I need to deal with that situation next week. Right after I do my laundry.

-Pet

dear bob,
There's an old saying, "a man may work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done." I thought about updating it to make it more pc, but realized you wouldn't care.
I'm just really tired of being stuck at home with them. I love them dearly. With everything I've got. I just need to be able to get out more, and be an adult sometimes. Church helps, but it's one or two hours a week, and people ask me constantly about them as if I'm no longer a person, just a supernannybot or something. My dear husband works his butt off, and I appreciate it. I just am tired of this situation today, and know it's gonna be awhile before it changes.
Thanks for listening.
SARA

Dear Bob,
I'm so glad I'm married. Heaven forbid anything happened to my husband, I don't think I would ever date again. Though it would be kind of sad, because he doesn't like to have his picture taken or write anything. I guess I could listen to someone play Dawn of War or volunteer to do massage therapists' taxes for free, to give myself the impression he was still here. Even though he's not a massage therapist anymore, and sometimes he's really sad about that.

Dear Bob,

I wish people would cease to exist and stop getting my hopes up.

Dear Bob,

I am so glad you are back.

Dear Bob,

i've been putting off writing to you, because i can't help but feel like somehow, you're different. as though the fact that i can't look back at the stages of you means that you're any less important, or any less brilliant at what it is that you do. i understand that it's unfair. but i can't help it.

i'm beginning to realize tonight, though, that i can wait and wait and wait and never feel comfortable or safe the way i used to feel with you again. that kind of safety doesn't spontaneously take root. it's got to be planted.

and i feel so lost in every aspect of my life right now. i feel like i'm drifiting, and that everything that i was once so sure of is now transparent. vague. because it is all in the context of loving him.

which doesn't change, Bob. i'm learning that, too. i already love henry, and at this point it doesn't matter whether or not he's actually here. i can go right on loving him fiercely, tremendously, all by myself. i want him to be here. i want to love him when he's with me. but i can love him when he's not, too.

and there's something... calming about that. the idea that there are some things that cannot be taken away from me, regardless of how circumstances may change.

i still don't feel right about posting here. but i'll never feel right about posting here until i begin to do it.


thanks. as always.

for listening.