Over the last few days, I have been sending Kay a few emails. I am ashamed to admit that this is an intentional aspect of some grander plan. One could say that it is to get her re-accustomed to getting emails from me, though this is a somewhat less than charitable way of looking at it.

In reality, it is a way for me to psych myself up for sending what I hope to be the email wherein I discuss my feelings for her. It's less that she needs some sort of preparation for simply receiving an email, and more that I need to get myself ready to *actually* click the button that sends it.

I am clearly struggling with this process if I am feeling the need to not only psych myself up to email someone but also journal about the process of psyching myself up.

I am, as always, a coward. That I even need to do this over email is proof enough of that.

Anyway, here is what I am thinking that I will send her tomorrow --- it is getting late today and I want to be awake for the whole process.

> Kay
>
> If you had told me, over the years that we have known each other, that I would be writing to you like this, I wouldn't have believed you. It's a strange enough act on its own, sending you an email, but to do so like this, to send something like this, is so strange as to border on the ludicrous.
>
> We've known each other for a good, what, five years now? And have been friends for a good chunk of that time. For some reason, we just kind of click when we really get going talking to each other, sharing whatever thing we're interested in at the time. We share a lot of the same idiosyncrasies, verbal habits, and even coping mechanisms.
>
> Lately, I have noticed something of a change in myself. I've always enjoyed your company, of course, but I have noticed that my feelings of friendship are starting to take on a romantic bent.
>
> I'm sure that I could go on, as you know I am prone to doing, but that would only muddy the point. Needless to say, I like you Kay, and am starting to admit to myself that I am liking you more as time goes by. And though I've been hesitant to put it in such words even to myself, I think I'm falling in love with you.
>
> I don't know how to do this. I am a consummately awkward person by my own admission, and I've never had to admit that I've started to feel romantic toward someone before. Perhaps that's weird. Normal people, I suspect, have told several people that they're in love by the time that they're nearing thirty, but, well, it has just never been on my radar.
>
> I feel compelled to say that you are under no obligation to return these feelings toward me. If you don't feel the same way, that's completely fine, and I hope that this will not negatively impact your view of me as a friend. This is a feeling I've had toward you, but it need not be the *only* feeling I have.
>
> But, on the chance that this is a mutual feeling between us, I would like to deepen our relationship beyond friendship. As stated, I have no idea how to do this, so I suppose I'm asking you out ☺
>
> Again, no worries if not! I am simply happy to have you as my friend.
>
> Best,
>
> Dee

I have slaved over these words so long that I think I nearly have the letter memorized. It's silly, in a way, to put this much energy into something, but this entire process has been silly. It's been silly since I caught myself having dreams about her, and before even that, when I started this whole journal process.

But I am nothing if not deliberate, and this feels like the proper way to undertake a discernment, though I find that term most often in a religious context. I am digging deep into all of my thoughts, stripping away the extraneous ones, and then boiling the remainder down into an admission. An admission to myself, but also one that I can send to Kay.

I will think on it and pray on it for one more night before sending it, but honestly, of all of the decisions that I've made around this entire debacle, if it can be called that, this one feels the most freeing. It feels like me opening a little bit of space for myself.

It was all well and good for me to reduce my feelings to trying to be the best friend I could be for her[^bff], and one ought to keep in mind the selfless in one's life, but, well, one cannot be a truly good friend while withholding information. I cannot, at least. I can't be a good friend while continuing to tear myself up inside over this. I called myself a narcissist before in these pages, but, while perhaps some of my thoughts have been narcissistic, that is far to strong a word than required for simply striving for happiness.

I will think, I will pray, and then I will click "send".

[^bff]: Something I aim to do for her regardless.

-----

As promised, I spent this morning thinking and praying on the letter, and in true Dee form, this involved getting a ride to a trail head up by the foothills and going for a walk.

My mind was too busy and unsettled to do much other than attempt to sort feelings into differently labeled and sized boxes. I ran through an internal checklist of all the things that had happened leading up to this decision, all the steps along the path of discernment. I ticked them off one by one as I filed them on various shelves, then went back through and erased all of the check marks and filed them on different shelves. It was exhausting, being unable to let go of a thought, like a cut on the inside of one's muzzle or a zit at the base of a whisker, something you can't help but poke and prod at ceaselessly in the hopes that maybe something will help.

Eventually, I simply got too tired to continue thinking like that. I was panting by now, the cool air of the foothills drawing heat from me and leaving my tongue dry and lolling. I realized that I had nearly jogged up the hill from the trail head, and had made it much further than I had intended while so preoccupied.

I considered heading back into town before it got too hot out, but instead, I found a rock off to the side of the trail that wasn't too dusty, and I sat down and looked out over what bits of Sawtooth I could see over the first real hill outside of town.

Scraps of buildings peeked out from the very south edge of downtown, then a mess of neighborhoods swept down south, affluence and age defined block by block. Out behind town toward the highway, the houses faded and warehouses sprouted in their place. Warehouses and workshops and anonymous, low-slung office buildings that doubtless housed call centers or data entry facilities or hyperspecific contractors.

And then beyond out into the scattered fields and grazing land. What green there was outside those fields was already fading into brown, and in the air the brown was echoed in a haze of dust or what smog dared collect above the town.

I wish that I could say that I talked with God then, like I have so many other times in this narrative. I wish I could tell you that he spoke to me in the slow dissolution of town into not-town. I wish I could say that I found beauty even in the right angles that nature so abhors, that even industry spoke to a sort of majesty all its own.

He didn't, though. He was silent. There was no surety to be had, there was no gentle nudges by that still, small voice this way or that.

I prayed the rosary instead, counting decades of *Hail Marys* and *Our Fathers* on beads worn smooth.

I couldn't even form a request, at that point. I couldn't talk to God, I couldn't come up with the words, all I could do was sit with myself and my thoughts and my rosary and a pulse racing at the tension of limerence within me, at the thought of all I could possibly have in my future.

I sat on that rock until I started to bake in the sun, then started to head back down the trail where I came. It had grown far too hot and I had to beg water off a better prepared mountain lion about halfway through my hike back to the trail head just to keep my lips and tongue wet as I puffed and panted.

At the lot, I called for another GetThere care to take me back home, back to my air-conditioned apartment where I could rehydrate and hem and haw until eventually, hopefully, maybe, I could finally hit send on that email and release this overwhelming tension within.

-----
