When I look back at some of the entries from during and immediately after my trip, they all sound so bleak. They make it sound like I did not enjoy it, when I clearly did. I focus a lot on my time spent away from Kay. I focus a lot on memories. I focus a lot on that yearning tugging at my chest whenever I was around her.

And honestly, I don't think that's fair to what actually happened. I *did* enjoy my time around her. I enjoyed it immensely. When we were walking, when we were just ceaselessly rambling at each other about the things we find fascinating, when we went out to lunch, it was all this really delightful mix of nostalgia and connection that went beyond just the desire for anything more. I said in a previous entry that, if limerence is an unwanted emotional attraction, maybe all I really want to do with/for Kay is be the best friend to her that I possibly can. I want to make her happy, and that, in turn, will make me happy as well.

I put that to work when I was with her. We went out to coffee several times at that café near my rented room, and spent a while just talking. We even went for a hike together and, though it lacked the spiritual savor of my other hike in the Reserve, it was still a meaningful experience for me.

And yet, I didn't write about those times, or touched on them only briefly.

I look back through my entries from the visit and wonder why it is that I wrote only about yearning, when I was writing about Kay. I apparently had a hard time putting down the quotidian, all the just plain *hanging out* that we did together, and instead focused on the burning inside me that craved more than that. It was a form of catastrophizing.

That's not fair to her, that's not fair to me, and that's not fair to the truth of what it is that I think I would actually get out of a relationship with her.

It was that last part that got me me thinking and reading, and I came across an idea that the sheer intensity of limerence had obscured, which is that, above all else, one's partner should be one's best friend, someone who you know will be there with you, share your moments with you. Someone you love and who loves you back, of course, but beyond that, someone who is a part of your life that goes beyond just base-level friendship and up into best friends territory, and beyond.

I think that, right now, I would call Kay my best friend. Unsurprising, of course, given how few friends I have outside of my friendship with her. I am cordial with folks from work and have gotten lunch with several, and there are quite a few folks from church that I have spent time with outside of that context, but, while I care about them, I don't care about them to nearly the same extent that I care about Kay.

I read back through all of those entries and, while I don't wish to put words into her mouth, I sense in her many of the same thoughts. She talked about how few people she keeps up with from Sawtooth, and she mentions having picked up the habit of apologizing to others for talking in the same, excited way that she talks with me, and in that, I see best-friendship.

And if I put those together, if I think of it this way and add that romantic devotion to what is otherwise a friendly devotion, if I turn *philia* into *eros*, then is that not a deepening of that friendship? Is that not moving forward? Is that not progress?

I sound so close to giving up, in those entries. I sound like someone who is struggling with their feelings rather than the mechanics of the relationship (though I do note that Kay brings up the mechanical point of our differences in approach to religion, to put it charitably).

I am not one to unconditionally say that all progress is good, but much of it is, and honestly, at this point, I struggle to see the ways in which progressing our relationship would be a negative.

So, enough equivocation. I think it's time to tell her. To ask her. To, if nothing else, find out where we stand and see what futures lay ahead of us.

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