My thoughts are still frequently invaded by Teddy Bear. I wonder if there’ll ever be a day when I don’t think of her.

Yesterday’s not getting the letter returned to me for whatever reason, or a letter from her, confirmed my beliefs of her ignoring me. The top reasons I can think of as to why she blew me off are:

1. She’s seeing someone.

2. Someone said something to her about me that she didn’t like.

3. There’s a never-see-any-former-inmates policy that went into effect over the last year.

4. She decided not to bother with a married ex-con who lives an hour away.

5. She was the best actress I’ve ever seen or heard of, who was just playing me for a fool all along.

The much less likely scenarios are:

1. She was killed in an accident.

2. She’s laid up in the hospital due to an illness/injury.

3. My letter was lost in the mail.

4. She’s out of state on a family emergency.

Either way, if something did come up that was out of her control, she could’ve found 5 minutes to break away and call me to tell me what was going on, rather than leave me hanging and believing she doesn’t care.

All in all, I guess I’m just not meant to have a woman as a side dish. Oh well. I’ve always been totally cursed in that department and I know I can’t change fate. Teddy Bear was and always will be just a fantasy. It seems most of my life’s been based on fantasy!

I’m just glad I mailed her letter or else I’d really accuse Tom of not mailing my mail.

The doll people say the doll was mailed on the 16th. I definitely should’ve gotten it by now. I’m sick of this doll chase game I always have to play. It always has to be such a big fight to get the damn dolls here! They say to let them know in 10 more days if it hasn’t arrived and they’ll ship another doll. Right. And how long will that one take to get here?

Got a letter from Mary, requesting all her book stuff. She says she’s gonna be there another 6 months and that she wants them so that she can know what she’s covered and what she hasn’t. Wants to get on with writing more so she feels like she’s doing something.

Another printing request?! I mean, I already gave her 3 or 4 copies. Where did they all go? And doesn’t she know by now that printers aren’t reliable? Especially mine? She’ll have to wait till I get new cartridges in a few days or so when we get the stock money, but I’m sure there’ll be delays and problems with even that.

I got this letter no doubt the same day she got mine crying on her shoulder about Teddy Bear.

I know this is dishonest, but I just don’t want to visit her. I don’t want to go through the hassles of waiting forever. I don’t want the memories of her. I’ll tell her we popped in one day and that I was turned away cuz I’m still on probation. She’ll never know. Besides, there’s a damn good chance that’d happen for real.

I also told her that if she ever does see Teddy Bear again, I don’t care what she says to her. She can tell her what an asshole she is for being so low and so cold as to blow me off without a simple little explanation.

What? Is she that gutless that she couldn’t even give me an explanation?

Obviously so. And I thought she was a strong, brave person! People can really fool us. Even if we’re usually good at judging and sensing other people.

How did this woman manage to get under my skin in just 6 months? I couldn’t have seen her more than 20 times during those months.

How could she do this? Why? How? Why? How? Why? How? Why? How? That’s all that goes through my head! I just don’t get it. Here I was thrilled to finally have a mutual attraction. Well, I know Officer R. D. Johnson was attracted to me. And I know Officer R. D. Johnson did like me.

So what happened? The number one thing that comes to mind still says that she met someone she was even more attracted to and that she liked even more. Sure it’s a bummer we can’t get together for whatever reason, but couldn’t she have at least told me so? I think that the fact that she’s left me hanging hurts more than any reason she could have for not seeing me.

How I wish she’d call me up tomorrow and say, “Hey, Dawn! I was on vacation for the last week and I only just got your letter yesterday.”

But this will never happen, which makes me wish I could do what the character in my Dean Koontz book is doing. She was molested as a child by her father, and she designs virtual reality scenes. This is a technique by which a computer simulates a three-dimensional physical environment using visual and auditory stimuli and within which people can interact to affect what happens in the simulation. She creates scenes depicting different possible outcomes of the abuse. In real life, she couldn’t fight back. In one of the virtual reality scenes, she does. In another, she is killed. I don’t know why she’d create a scene killing herself, but anyway, she does this as a form of therapy.

Well, wouldn’t it be fun therapy for me if I could create various scenes where I confront Teddy Bear for hurting me, and in these various scenes, I’d get different answers as to why she led me on and blew me off? You gotta be able to draw, though, and although I can draw, I was never that great of an artist. Whenever I’d try to draw someone, it was hit or miss as to whether or not the drawing would resemble the person I wanted it to. I also haven’t drawn in a long time. I just got sick of it, I guess.

If only I’d known she was gonna do this. I just never believed she would, though. If I had known, maybe I could’ve written something in the letter about how people were blowing me off or something, and maybe that’d make her feel bad about blowing me off herself. But I wouldn’t have wanted her to come see me out of guilt, either. I’d have wanted her to come see me because she wanted to. Why the fuck did she say she would in the first place if she didn’t want to?

All these months I wondered if she thought about me and missed me as much as I did her. Well, I may never get an answer as to why she blew me off, but I sure as hell got my answer as far as her thinking/missing me!

Never ever have I been a “woman scorned” like this. Not even Kacey’s dumping me 12 years ago hurt, confused and angered me this much. Not even close.