{"sf1_id":2150944,"sf2_id":"ynZx8Aqe","title":"Limerent Object (part 36-40)","author":"makyo","words":5458,"posted_at":"2024-07-03T19:44:27.000Z","tags":["Contemporary","Coyote","Romance","catholic","crush","diary"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/2150944-limerent-object-part-36-40","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/ynZx8Aqe","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/3c/1d/3c1d3371-9a26-4098-94d0-5b2756401488","description":"Finally getting around to uploading Limerent Object. As a novella, I will be breaking it up into several parts, just to keep it easier to read. This was originally published in A Wildness of the Heart: Limerent Object and Other Stories, which you can find at [https://wildness.makyo.ink](https://wildness.makyo.ink)","content":"# 36\n \n\nOver 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.\n\n \n\nIn 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nI am, as always, a coward. That I even need to do this over email is proof enough of that.\n\n \n\nAnyway, 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.\n\n \n\n\u003e Kay\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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.\n\u003e \n\u003e 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 ?\n\u003e \n\u003e Again, no worries if not! I am simply happy to have you as my friend.\n\u003e \n\u003e Best,\n\u003e \n\u003e Dee\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nBut 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nIt was all well and good for me to reduce my feelings to trying to be the best friend I could be for her 1, 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.\n\n \n\nI will think, I will pray, and then I will click “send\".\n\n \n\n-----\n\n \n\n1 Something I aim to do for her regardless.\n\n \n# 37\n \n\nAs 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.\n\n \n\nMy 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.\n\n \n\nEventually, 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nScraps 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.\n\n \n\nAnd 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nHe 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.\n\n \n\nI prayed the rosary instead, counting decades of _Hail Marys_ and _Our Fathers_ on beads worn smooth.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nAt 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.\n\n \n# 38\n \n\n\u003e _7:24 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Been thinking.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:26 PM Dee\\\u003e_ We still talk a lot, and I really like that. For having only had a little bit of time together at UI, it's nice that we've been able to keep up with each other.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:26 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Yeah?\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:26 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I mean, I like it too.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:27 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I only talk to you and like two classmates from that time, and one only because he's also up here in Boise.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:27 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Yeah.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:28 PM Dee\\\u003e_ So I don't know if this is weird or not. It's not something I've ever done or\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:28 PM Kay\\\u003e_ ?\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:31 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Not something I've ever done or really felt, but I think I really like you.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:31 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Know I really like you.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:31 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And goodness knows I have no idea what to do about it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:31 PM Dee\\\u003e_ It's taken me weeks to even get to the point where I could say that.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:32 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Huh…\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:33 PM Dee\\\u003e_ ???\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:34 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I like you too, but I'm not sure if it's in the same way?\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:34 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Assuming you mean romantically.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:34 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Yes.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:35 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Yeah, see.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:35 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I don't know.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:35 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I don't either, I guess.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:37 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I'm really not sure how to take this conversation haha\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:40 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I hope that's not\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:40 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I don't know\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:40 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Painful?\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:45 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Well.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:45 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Yeah, sorry…\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:45 PM Dee\\\u003e_ No no, I mean\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:45 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Well, it is, but that's not quite where I was going, hah.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:46 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Sorry. I'll let you type.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:50 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I don't really know what I wanted out of this conversation, to be honest. I wasn't even intending for it to be a conversation, at least right off the bat. I had a whole email written up that I was going to send you, to be perfectly nerdy about it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:54 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Feelings like this aren't logical. At least, they don't feel logical So I think I just wanted to say that because I don't know what to do with all of them. They just boil up within me and I just sit there and feel weird and bad but also kind of good at the same time. I just started falling for you, and kept it to myself because it felt like such an imposition to admit that to you.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:54 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And I should add\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:55 PM Dee\\\u003e_ The goal is specifically NOT to do that. It wasn't to try and rope you into something you don't want to do, and I don't want to make it sound like I am trying to do so now.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:55 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Guilt you into it or whatever.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:56 PM Dee\\\u003e_ But I did want to talk about it and get it off my chest.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:57 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And I guess that's it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:57 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Alright.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:58 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I mean, I don't think you could guilt the wings off a fly, Dee.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:58 PM Kay\\\u003e_ The whole Catholic thing is guilting yourself, right?\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:59 PM Dee\\\u003e_ That's a bit of an uncharitable way to put it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:59 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Sorry. You know I don't understand it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _7:59 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Yeah.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:00 PM Kay\\\u003e_ And that's maybe part of it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:00 PM Dee\\\u003e_ How so?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:01 PM Kay\\\u003e_ How would you feel being in a relationship with someone who doesn't believe the same stuff?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:01 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Doesn't believe ANY of it, I mean.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:01 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I'm not going to knock it or anything, but I'm not going to try it, either.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:02 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I'm sorry.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:02 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Hah.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:02 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Sorry, that came out weird?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:06 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Seriously, though, I really don't know. This whole thing, this whole crush or whatever it is, I don't know what the end goal of it is. It's limerence, it's something that's happening to me, and I don't know what to do about it. It's this enormous feeling and you're the limerent object, and I hate that my brain is doing it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:07 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And at the same time, I really do like you, and that is something I am happy to accommodate even in the context of our friendship.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:07 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Because above all else, I'm simply happy to have you as my friend.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:07 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Same!\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:09 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And even if a relationship isn't in our future, that's totally okay.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:10 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Thanks Dee \\\u003c3\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:10 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I don't know, it's weird.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:11 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I kind of suspected, now that I think back on it?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:11 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Not like you were being a weirdo.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:11 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Or any more than usual ????\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:13 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Just little things about how you acted when I was over. Nothing bad, just you had a certain distance about you, like you were being extra careful about something or guarding something. Like, every time you came over to my place and wound up sitting in my bed or something, you'd get all quiet.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:13 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I realize after the fact that that was probably super weird for you. Sorry about that.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:14 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Oh, are you saying I was more awkward than usual? Shock and surprise!\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:14 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Haha\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:17 PM Dee\\\u003e_ It was weird, but please don't put that on you. I just…yeah, I was fighting with my emotions at the time, and huddling on your bed where literally all I could smell was you and with you being the sole focus of my attention, it was…well.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:18 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Intense, I guess.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:18 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I bet.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:18 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Still, I'm sorry, Dee.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:19 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I won't say my 'no' is absolute and forever, I can't predict that, but it is a 'no' for now.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:19 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Thanks, Kay.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:20 PM Dee\\\u003e_ For being so open about it, I mean.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:20 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And honest, I guess.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:21 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Uh…and to continue being awkward for at least a moment longer, are you okay remaining friends?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:21 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Dee I swear to god\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:22 PM Kay\\\u003e_ If you did anything to make me not want to be your friend any longer a) you would know it because I would kick your ass and b) I'd go fucking nuts because I wasn't kidding about you being just about the only friend I have that I can talk to.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:22 PM Kay\\\u003e_ We're friends, okay? If a friendship can't take a challenge, what even is it, then? :P\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:23 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Haha. Well, good. I'm not keen on getting my ass kicked, and ditto. I'd rather have my nails pulled out that lose you as a friend.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:23 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Gross\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:23 PM Kay\\\u003e_ ????\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:25 PM Dee\\\u003e_ It feels surprisingly good to get that out.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:25 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Even if it isn't the outcome you wanted?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:26 PM Dee\\\u003e_ It's weird.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:27 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I'm not sure what outcome it is that I really wanted.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:29 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I mean, not gonna lie, if we'd wound up going out or whatever, that would've been nice! But I don't think that was ACTUALLY my goal. I think I really just wanted to get it off my chest. I wanted to not be holding it in and feeling like an idiot any longer.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:29 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I bet!\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:30 PM Kay\\\u003e_ How long has it been, anyway?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:31 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Shit. If you don't mind me asking, that is. I don't want to draw it out if this is just continuing to hurt you or anything ????\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:32 PM Dee\\\u003e_ No, it's okay! It's made me a weird, giggly mess for some reason because apparently I'm still twelve, admitting that I have a crush, but it's good to talk about.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:32 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Way better than an email would have been, yikes.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:32 PM Dee\\\u003e_ But it's been about six months? A bit longer?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:33 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Can I just say that you writing up a whole-ass email to tell me that you like me is the most Dee possible thing that I can think of?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:33 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Listen.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:33 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I set up an archetype for myself and have no choice but to live up to it.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:33 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Nerd\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:35 PM Kay\\\u003e_ What was even in the email?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:35 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I still have it in drafts. Want me to just send it?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:35 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Sure\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:43 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Oh Dee\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:43 PM Kay\\\u003e_ This is incredibly sweet, jesus\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:43 PM Kay\\\u003e_ fuck haha\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:43 PM Kay\\\u003e_ got me all sniffly\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:44 PM Kay\\\u003e_ You're still a total nerd\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:45 PM Kay\\\u003e_ But whoever you wind up with is gonna be the luckiest gal out there\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:45 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Man, I'm sorry\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:46 PM Dee\\\u003e_ ??\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:47 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I feel like I'm teasing you by saying that ????\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:47 PM Dee\\\u003e_ I don't feel teased.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:48 PM Dee\\\u003e_ A bit…bashful, maybe?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:48 PM Dee\\\u003e_ And I'm not going to lie that hearing that makes me a little bit hopeful for the future, but I stand by what I said that I'm alright with your answer, and am happy to have you as a friend.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:49 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Uh\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:49 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Yeah, I don't know\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:49 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Let's talk about it in the future sometime, then? Because yeah, like\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:50 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Maybe we could make it work?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:51 PM Kay\\\u003e_ But just not right now\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:51 PM Kay\\\u003e_ I can picture it in my mind, and you're cute and sweet and we have fun, but I guess I just can't say yes right now.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:52 PM Dee\\\u003e_ For the future, then.\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:52 PM Dee\\\u003e_ For now, I'm gonna go order some food. Not to put an artificial stopper in this, but maybe we can just chill with a movie or something after?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:53 PM Kay\\\u003e_ Yeah, sounds good ???? Sci-fi bullshit?\n\n \n\n\u003e _8:53 PM Dee\\\u003e_ Oh, definitely sci-fi bullshit.\n\n \n# 39\n \n\nAll 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.\n\n \n\nBut 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.\n\n \n\nThat 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.\n\n \n\nBetter? I hope so, but it is yet to be seen.\n\n \n\nFor 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.\n\n \n\nI 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?\n\n \n\nAnd 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?\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nBut 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?\n\n \n\nAnd 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.\n\n \n\nAnd 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.\n\n \n\nA 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?\n\n \n\nAnd 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.\n\n \n\nAnd 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n\nOh, and should we have children, would they be raised Catholic? Would they be baptized? Would they attend mass and their mother not?\n\n \n\nI can see it being acceptable, but I can also see it being an awful lot of work for the both of us.\n\n \n\nWhere 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 can manage that?\n\n \n\nBefore, 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.\n\n \n\nIn 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.\n\n \n\nTrite? 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.\n\n \n\nI 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.\n\n \n# 40\n \n\nI closed my steno pad after the most recent entry, fully intending that that would be the last entry that I would write. The discernment, after all, was complete, even if only for a little while, and I no longer needed to puzzle it out on paper.\n\n \n\n“That's bullshit and you know it,\" Jeremy laughed when I told him this fact.\n\n \n\nI felt my ears redden. “You think I'll keep writing about it?\"\n\n \n\n“Of course I do, Dee. It's just how you work. I think you reached a milestone with this, and I'm honestly proud of you. You were always courageous, you know. You can think of it like a hill, you had to push and push and push, and you kept doing so even if you didn't really know you were. Then you hit the tipping point at the top of the hill and that courage came through and did its job.\"\n\n \n\nI nodded and mumbled a thanks.\n\n \n\n“So, yes, you reached a milestone, but the work isn't over, I bet. Are you ready to just drop back into your old friendship with Kay?\"\n\n \n\nAfter a moment's thought, I shook my head. “No. It's changed things plenty. The last few days feel like a renegotiation of boundaries. It feels like we're both being really careful around the other.\"\n\n \n\n“Right,\" he said. “I imagine you'll have to learn how to be friends again, and that that friendship will look different.\"\n\n \n\n“You think I should keep journaling on it, then?\"\n\n \n\n“I don't think you have a choice, bud,\" he laughed. “The stuff you sent me was you doing your best to process all of this, and I could see the work taking place. You just admitted the work will continue, so, yeah, keep it up. And anyway, you talk about your advisor saying that he would have been concerned if you _were_ losing your faith, and Kay says that you writing her an email to tell her how you feel is the most you thing ever. I think you're basically stuck journaling.\"\n\n \n\nIt was my turn to laugh. “Right, right, okay. I'll keep it up, then.\"\n\n \n\n“And hey, you can pull a lot of your thoughts on discernment and such out into a book or hell, clean these up and turn them into a memoir. It's not like this stuff is useful to only you.\"\n\n \n\nThat's been lingering with me, but I remain unsure. I could, yes, and maybe it would provide some sort of entertainment, but that would mean going through and editing everything up 1. Even just the process of transferring notes from paper to computer so that I could email them to Jeremy had been rough enough, being confronted by that Dee of a few months back, struggling with the most basic language of actually liking someone.\n\n \n\nI do agree with the first point that Jeremy made, though. I really ought to keep journaling. It's good for me, and I don't think I could ever really stop, after going through this.\n\n \n\nSo, yes. The work continues.\n\n \n\nKay broached the subject of stopping by UI Sawtooth for a concert some day and spending a bit of time together. The doors to friendship remain open, and I don't imagine that it will be _intolerably_ awkward, but it will still present challenges. Would hugging be too awkward? Should we spend the whole trip together much like we did the last one?\n\n \n\nAs the next step of my _spiritual_ discernment, I have reached out to the parish priest about offering free mental health counseling to less fortunate members of the congregation or those who stop by the mission the church runs in town and he is going to set up a meeting with the bishop of the diocese to see if there's space for such in a church-sanctioned context. I think that I would be happy enough to volunteer such on my own. It's not the spiritual counseling that I had once planned on after my undergrad, but it is something far more in my area of expertise and comfort zone.\n\n \n\nAll these things are part of the work, though. Work is part of life, and life goes on. I still see my clients. I still watch videos and talk about my days with Kay. I still go to mass. I still think about the past year when I write. I still get rides out to the edge of Sawtooth or over to a trail head and walk until my feet ache and I am gasping in the pine-scented, dusty air.\n\n \n\nAnd still I talk with God.\n\n \n\n-----\n\n \n\n1 I already felt compelled to add all of these footnotes, after all.\n\n \n\n_Fin._","series":{"name":"Sawtooth: Limerent Object","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/2150940-limerent-object-parts-31-35.json"}}