rabbit in the headlights

Sometimes I wonder how much becoming friends with her right at the time when vaccines were finally starting to come out for Covid influenced our friendship. I know at least from my side it'd been a whole year taken from me (like everyone else), being cooped up inside, right after I'd had a wonderful vacation in New England in late 2019 and planned to do so much outside in 2020.

I lost myself in writing instead in 2020. Never got to go out to a lesbian bar for my 28th birthday that year as I wanted (still haven't done that for any birthday), because my birthday is in April and lockdowns started in late March that year. Never got to travel in 2020 as I planned to (I'd planned to go back to New England; instead, I haven't been back there since 2019—this also pushed back by a few years when I'd originally planned to visit Europe for the first time). I found joy in writing and wrote 200k+ words of fanfic from like July-December 2020 for a fandom I literally hadn't written anything for since 2012.

Then I met her in March/April 2021. She said I could email her about writing and all that, so I did. In like her very first email back she suggested writing a collab. Which feels a bit weird now. No time really talking at all about fandom and other things before doing that, no building a friendship or rapport first over any period of time. But I'd never done that with anyone (I'd RP'ed with others in the late aughts/early '10s, never written a collab though) and I'd always been interested in it. So, I thought, why not.

I can't truly remember much of the collab anymore since it's been over five years. It does have over 17k hits on AO3 now and at least people still get enjoyment out of it.

Tbh I think the friendship crossed into codependency or something like it. I can see fault on both sides. Hindsight is... something. I much prefer not talking with a friend every day, at least not where the daily communication is multiple long paragraphs of messages. Like I think a secure friendship involves periods of silence. Hell, my best childhood friend and I go months without talking and I know we still love each other. (And other friends it can be days or weeks and all's cool.)

It's just odd now looking back at how much of my days in 2021 and 2022 revolved around talking with her and nothing was ever romantic (she's fucking married, for one huge thing, so that was never on the table at all).

Hell, even with romance, for fuck's sake, there's still... boundaries should exist. I feel like, looking back, we didn't have healthy boundaries. Shit was a bit too intense, and I never want anything like that friendship again. It's actually insane to me now that I went and drove 9 hours (including the time stopping at every interstate rest stop) to meet her after only like six months of knowing her. Granted, that was also my first vacation since 2019, and I saw it as a "Covid-safe" one.

But still. We went too deep far too fast (hell we added each other on FB not even a month into the friendship). It's probably one of, if not the most intense friendship I've ever had. I have never had a friendship like what I had with her, and I never want another friendship like it ever again. I still hope she has a lovely life, but I'm fine not being in it.