All of my work on emotional literacy is failing me now. It was largely failing me then, as well. I am doing my best to process the conversation that we had here, but I am in a state of, I suppose, numbness, and that numbness is taking up the same amount of space that the limerence did before. It is overwhelming in its nullity, and there is nothing, it seems, that I can do to shake it. I cannot transmute it into something more positive.

But that said, the nullity is not negative. It is not a lack of any necessity. It is a lack, instead, of the too-full feeling of limerence that had once taken up a full half of my entire being.

That space, I imagine, will contract. I will slowly retract that distension back into myself. Not the self I used to be, but something new and changed, for after so long of having that bloat, a permanent mark has been left. I am changed. I am different.

Better? I hope so, but it is yet to be seen.

For the point of my subconscious strain has faded, and only the habit of doing so remains. Where before I would dream of getting the chance to hold Kay's hand or to lay in bed next to her or, and let's not mince words here as this is what journals are for, make love, I now dream about what that life would have looked like in greater clarity. Where before I would construct a counterfactual universe in which we lived a perfect life, in which her fur was as soft as it was in my dreams, I now construct counterfactual universes in which we got together and it was specifically *not* perfect, and I run down a list of all of the things that might have hindered perfection. Religion, sure, but what about that envy I felt at the concert? Was that a one-time thing? Would that have carried over? Would I be a possessive partner, or would that have relaxed? And so I imagine both.

I imagine us a few years down the line, sharing an apartment. I imagine which of us would have to move. Would I move my practice to Boise? Would she be content, as a musician, to live out here in Sawtooth? We have a good enough music program at the university that she got her bachelors out here, but that presupposes the fact that she might want to teach. Would we even stay in Idaho?

And how would us living together look, anyway? I have my little one-bedroom apartment that suits me in particular due to its solitude. It faces a ruddy creek that has been gussied up into something grander through landscaping and a meandering path. I like my solitude, but living together means having someone constantly in your space. Where would I get that solitude?

I have my apartment set up with a combination library/den/home office and my bedroom, while Kay has her computer in her bedroom which is also her living room which is also, for the most part, her kitchen. Where would she put her computer, and where would I put mine? Would we share a library? I imagine so; in my brighter imaginings, I picture how we might have looked, sitting on a couch by our combined bookshelves, each reading our own thing.

But the problem remains. We would have to get a two-bedroom apartment, at the very least, so that we could have separate office spaces, separate areas of privacy. An office and a shared bedroom? Do we split the office with some kind of divider? Do I keep my office in the living room?

And still, I picture it working. I picture us sharing a bed. I picture us parceling out chores. I picture us waiting for the other to finish using the bathroom and getting a little disgusted by lingering scents. I picture us getting tired of simple pasta with chicken or whatever, and deciding to learn how to cook something better because eating out is getting expensive.

And sure, I picture the sex. I have no idea whether Kay is a virgin, and don't particularly care, I think, but I am, and instead of fantasizing about perfect lovemaking, I picture us struggling to get our moods aligned, and I picture the process of at least me learning how to be intimate, and potentially the both of us.

A wedding? Would that be in our future? And if so, what does that look like? Do we have a long and occasionally heated process of discernment to decide whether or not she is okay with a Catholic wedding?

And oh yes, the church. Do we find our own unique way to agree to disagree? I have little enough iconography in my place, but I do have my mother's crucifix and my father's painting of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha on my walls, and I would not be comfortable removing either. I pray the rosary regularly. I attend mass every weekend, if possible. These are the facts of my life, and until confronted with these imaginings, I had not realized that they are all visible. Kay would be confronted with all of them on a daily basis.

And I would be confronted with her atheism. On the surface, I can see that being acceptable to me, and none of my immediate family is alive to question whether or not it is appropriate for me to marry outside the church, so I do not have to rely on approval.

I can see it being acceptable, except for the fact that a core aspect of my life is missing from hers. Me, Dee, the one who was on track to be Father Kimana. Visible or not, that is a divide that can only be bridged and never filled.

Oh, and should we have children, would they be raised Catholic? Would they be baptized? Would they attend mass and their mother not?

I can see it being acceptable, but I can also see it being an awful lot of work for the both of us.

Where are the compromises? Where are the fights? Where are we twenty, thirty, forty years down the line? Do we make it twenty, thirty, forty years? Are we so fit for each other that [we](we) can manage that?

Before, when limerence filled me to overflowing, I imagined in dreamy yeses and delicate physicality. Now that that has faded and left something else in its place, I imagine in questions. I imagine in what-ifs and is-it-actuallys.

In the end, though, I hope that this is better. More, I *believe* that it is better, this numbness that has taken its place. I believe it must be, because if there is one sensation that I can liken to this numbness, these imaginings, these feelings and emotions, it is healing.

Trite? Sure, but limerence was an unwieldy mass that laid claim to me, and, even at its best, I was opposed to that claim. I am healing from the wounds that it left when it dug its claws into me, when it was removed and left that hole where once it was.

I am free of it, I am healing, and all these imaginings and suppositions boil down to me desiring only that, should we wind up deciding some day down the line to get together, that we come across that jointly, consensually, honestly, syntonically, uninfluenced by that wildness of the heart, as past-Dee put it.

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