Getting to Know NeverTooLate

Over the next few months, NeverTooLate and I started emailing each other frequently. I asked questions about her past, she answered and asked me some questions of her own. I filled her in on my childhood, and she told me about hers. We had some odd things in common, like we both needed braces because we had gaps in between our front teeth, we both spent our 21^st birthdays in NYC with our parents (she was pregnant with me at the time), and we both loved to read.

We had our differences too, she wasn’t as confident as I am; she’s a pool person while I would love to live on the beach, and we felt differently about her telling SinginInTheRain about talking to me. At first, we were on the same page because I was overwhelmed with talking to NeverTooLate. I was afraid that if I tried to do too much, I wouldn’t be able to handle it all. I wanted to get to know NeverTooLate without having to get to know SinginInTheRain at the same time. However, as time went on, I started to feel like I could handle getting to know them both. After a few months, she told me that she was ready to tell him and that she wanted to give me a heads up. I was glad that she gave me the heads up first so I would be prepared in case he wanted to get in touch with me. I sent her back an email thanking her and asking her if I could send her a letter to give to him from me, so that I could have a voice in the whole situation. She freaked out! She told me that she felt pressured and was starting to feel like a scared little girl again.

This should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to end well, but I naively thought that things would work themselves out.  I figured that she was dealing with things in her own way, and didn’t realize that this reaction meant that she wasn’t dealing with things at all.