Letter to a friend

Someone made the mistake of asking how my week was. Rather than write this over and over again, I'll post it here, no names. The young lady whom I talk about below doesn't read the blog, nor do any of our mutual friends who aren't already in the know, so I don't feel this is a breach of confidence or anything.

We had the Big Talk. It was the worst conversation of my life. Took two or three days, and everything that could go wrong went wrong. After talking face-to-face for an hour and a half on Sunday I had no idea where she was at. I knew she wasn't quite where I was, but it wasn't clear what she saw. We both proved to be terrible at expressing ourselves - I went on forever and couldn't just spit out what I wanted to say. She'd hardly say anything, even when I asked or waited. Sunday night I talked with my guy friends for hours, figuring out what I should do. I felt I still had a chance to get the kind of agreement I was looking for, but mainly I was confused and hurting. Monday we chatted online for three hours. I finally understood what she was saying, though I still couldn't get her to give me a good explanation for why. She was clear, however, that courtship wasn't an option, now or ever, and that she'd never felt for me what I felt for her. She also says she didn't know I liked her as more than a friend, though our mutual friends certainly picked up on that. So we had each projected our own feelings onto the other! Anyway, I got the message loud and clear. I was on the verge of tears all evening. The song "Yesterday" came on the radio, and I had to run out of the room to keep from breaking down (I didn't want to have to explain the whole saga to my family, though I told my Dad). I emailed her again the next morning with questions about her motivations, which I still didn't understand. She's said a few times that she wanted to see me as a brother, no matter what our relationship. But the few times she'd lapsed and viewed me as "potential" she'd lost sight of my being a brother, so she didn't want to see me as "potential" unless she could also see me as a brother, which she couldn't. This explanation was rather unsatisfactory. I mean, I'd be willing to wait until she could work this out in her mind, but clearly that wasn't what she was looking for. So I emailed her. Tuesday night, however, I had a good prayer time for the first time in a few days, and God really spoke to me. He showed me how much I value Meg as a friend, and how in the chaos of the conversation I'd lost sight of our friendship. He also showed me that my last email had been too much, too prying, and not serving her. So I emailed again, very apologetically, telling her not to respond to the previous one, and mostly apologizing for how long it had been dragged out. She emailed me back Wednesday morning, thanking and forgiving me, but at the same time giving a very reasonable explanation: she hadn't been interested the way I was, and she also saw things that confirmed that we weren't right for each other, though she didn't want me to try to "fix" those things so she didn't tell me (I suspect this may include my vision for living in the Middle East; I knew that would be the biggest question mark). With this explanation in hand, the conversation is finished, and I have closure. I didn't need this, as God showed me, but it's nice to know what was really going on inside her head. Anyway, worst conversation I can ever imagine having, and if I could spend the last week working as a garbage man in Cairo instead of doing what I did, I would.

If you have any questions, don't ask them.