2:08 NSG - Montana
The invite to join NSG in her annual adventure to visit her Adventure Buddies in Montana and Wyoming was short notice. It took burning many brownie points to make it happen on my end, but it felt very right to chase this particular rainbow.
The drive to Montana would be 15 hours each way. Based on how conversations with NSG typically went, I was ecstatic for the opportunity. Talking with her is something to savour, like an endless unwrapping of silken philosophy and reason that is beautiful and soothing to engage with. Plus, of course, the whole being awkwardly in love with this incredibly beautiful woman was also pretty enjoyable, despite being resigned in the corner of the friendzone wearing my fucktard crown.
One oddity was that before we left, NSG asked me not to discuss or pursue the possibility of us having a relationship before or during the Montana Adventure. This makes perfect sense as translated into the friendzone: Don't make things weird while we're engaging with old friends during a special time. I further translated this as being her enjoying my company as a friend and adventure buddy, and her not wanting to quash either of those with needing to shoot down my obviously budding hopes until after we've had adventures - so then I can sulk on my own later. So it goes.
Except it didn't go like that at all. We barely made it half-way through Washington state before we found ourselves unable to resist talking about "us". A tearful blend of pain and joy unfurled for us both, as she clarified that relationship injunction was because she did indeed want to explore a relationship with me but didn't want it to overshadow this special event. The joy aspect of that might be obvious: I was already crazy about NSG, and she seemed very affected by me too. The pain part was more complicated. I think that, for NSG, it was based on being afraid of all the uncertainty, and how many compromises she was setting herself up for by virtue of my limited ability to enmesh lives at that moment. For me, the pain was recognizing the difficulty in communicating clearly, which has deeply-rooted worries about how that can go wrong for me.
The power of our camaraderie and enjoyment of each other let us work ourselves back to a friendly détente. And an agreement to focus on the adventure before us. Plus the adorable power of her dog Murphy, the elderly Ridgeback mutt along for perhaps his last big adventure, kept us grounded in the present.