Kelly Part 3

After Kelly and I admitted our feelings for each other, things started to unravel. I freaked out (so predictable) over how strong my feelings were for her and over the serious turn our relationship had taken.  

For me flight has always been the thing. Not fight. I retreat. Pull back. Withdraw. But this had become too real, too deep to disappear. I conveyed to her my discomfort and my shame with our relationship. Okay, probably not as much as I should have but she got the gist. In one of her letters she writes, “I have grown to care about you. And I have developed feelings for you. And then, with your permission, I have allowed myself to explore the possibilities of a deeper and more intimate relationship…What I’m asking of you is that you allow me to be part of the decision-making process.” Makes complete sense, right? But I started extracting myself anyway, in increments. We continued talking. But I was scared. I wanted to be with her. But knew there was no way this could happen.

But. But. But.

I knew there was no future. I simply would not let that happen. It was against the rules, it was a sin, my parents would disprove, society would judge me. On and on. 

Here's the thing. Before I got drunk and spilled my guts to her about how I felt, we had decided that she was going to come to NYC on her spring break. She had a good friend that lived two blocks from me (small world indeed). She was going to stay with him and we would all hang out, see the sights, and have fun. But now in the light of our late-night revelations, her visit seemed loaded and charged. I was feeling way too much shame and self-loathing to look forward to her visit. In fact, I was dreading it. 

I was not myself. I felt agitated. And stressed out. Kelly was coming to visit me. We were going to be in person together. Together. In person. I did NOT know how to handle this. I was scared out of my wits. I could not keep this huge secret that was consuming all my thoughts and infiltrating my body. It was festering inside me, bubbling up to my pores. I HAD to tell someone. I booked a flight to Ohio to see my best friend Mandy. The Mandy who had introduced me to Kelly. I had to tell her. She was my best friend. I needed help.  

Poor Mandy. She had seen me through the meeting, the flirting, the dating, and the breaking-up of my relationship with Matt. She had listened to me talk ad-nauseum about this guy and had been with me through all the ups and downs. In short, she knew me as a straight girl. So, she was just a little bit shocked when I told her I had fallen for a woman. And not just any woman. One of her former high school teachers to whom she had introduced me. Ugh. 

We both remember crying. Me crying. She crying. And then her saying “I have to tell David,” her new husband of several months who thought I was telling Mandy I had a terminal disease.  

She did give me one piece of advice that I took to heart. Do not drink when Kelly visits. A week later, when Kelly arrived, I was sober as a judge. Without my social lubricant, I was reserved and our interactions were awkward. It was too much to be around her. In person. In my world. In previous times when I saw Kelly, it was for an evening, always in her world and with her friends. AND it was always as friends that we were seeing each other. During this visit, all the unsaid things between us hung heavy in the air.

But it was the said things, the attractions and the desires that had been fun and light-hearted when they were under the surface, that now, having broken ground and been revealed – well, it was these things that hung like millstones around our necks. 

We did not talk about us AT ALL. Kelly probably had whiplash. I totally pulled away from her and she knew it. To her credit, she addressed the situation in a letter written shortly after her visit. She suggests that we “…continue talking and listening and laughing and building on our friendship…perhaps we can agree to just be honest with each other if it doesn’t work.” I, in characteristic fashion, was shut down and did not address her concerns with the weight they deserved at that stage in our relationship. Instead, I reverted to casual friend, all easy breezy. 

Kelly wanted to maintain a friendship with me. That’s just her. Her personality. She has a wide circle of friends…she can make friends with just about anyone and she is loyal. She was willing to roll-back our relationship and continue to get to know each other and enjoy each other as friends.

I found it too painful to just be friends. I wanted more. But I also found it too painful to be more than just friends. I couldn’t be in a same-sex relationship. It was wrong. It was sinful. It was unnatural. It was shameful. Our relationship already felt fraught with heavy and long-lasting consequences. It had already gone too far.

I could not upend my life entirely, could not give up my faith, could not break my parent’s hearts.  

I continued to pull back from our relationship. She tried to keep a friendship going but that is hard to do alone. Eventually, the telephone calls stopped. Then the letters. Not too long after our communication ended, she started dating someone. I still thought about her. I missed her. But I was relieved she was seeing someone else. Relieved that I would not repeat my pattern with her — see each other and have a great time, start communicating through letters, grow closer, push her away, repeat. More than all of that, though, I was relieved that I had narrowly escaped blowing up my life.