Oh dear.

Things are not going as well as I might have hoped.  I sent my mother an email with excerpts from this account to try to explain what’s really going on, and this is the email she sent back:
"I got your email and the diary excerpts.  It will take several readings for me to absorb it all, I think, and I just don’t have time before we leave for San Francisco to give it due diligence, so my comments now are very limited.  Curiously, if I put aside the fact that it’s you writing, and make it impersonal, it looks like the beginning of a very interesting book I might buy and read, although I would probably feel angry at the protagonist, and I don’t feel angry with you.  But of course, it isn’t impersonal and so my reactions are modified by knowing you and caring about you and your feelings in a very personal way.
 
One thing that particularly strikes me is that I have no experience of anything going right to my soul in the way you describe.  The closest I can come is how I feel about you and your brother, and that isn’t the same sort of thing at all.  I really don’t have a frame of reference for any of this, so it is very difficult to understand.
 
I will read what you sent me a few more times and try to get hold of the books you mentioned so I can talk to you intelligently about what is going on for you.  For now, I find myself frightened that you are not the person I know anymore–that of course is not my head talking, because my head knows that much of what you are saying is very consistent with things you have been saying most of your life.
 
I have been writing and rewriting now for way longer than I have to spend on this right now.  So I really am going to stop.  If it’s any reassurance, I will find a way to come to terms with whatever you end up being or doing. Though whether it’s embracing, tolerating, or just not thinking about it, I don’t know yet.  I will always love you no matter what.
 
As a parting thought, I want to say thank you–for two things, really.  First, for trusting me with something so difficult and threatening and unfinished.  And second, for giving me the opportunity to learn.  I don’t know if you remember, but at your Bat Mitzvah I told you that you were a teacher.  Well, you are teaching me acceptance.  And don’t worry, you aren’t the only one giving me that particular opportunity.  It’s a good lesson and one I struggle with over and over.  Maybe one of these days I’ll really get it."
 
It’s really not too bad.  It’s just…hard.  I don’t like upsetting my mother.  I am who I am, in large part, because I don’t like upsetting my mother…and I think perhaps I will just never tell my father.  Apparently we have a pewter goblet at home from the Renaissance Faire (my mother collects these) that has little figures on the sides that are supposed to be Pan and Dionysus, and my father did not even want it in the house.  Not good.  As Katie put it, "oooh, you’re in trouble!"  I found it very amusing and very suitable that the accepted phrase for this is "coming out of the broom closet."  Heehee.
 
I was aware that I was straying in the grey area dangerously close to real feelings for Adam.  I don’t know when I crossed to the other side of this area.  It happened while I was not looking.  I am not so far gone that I cannot pull back into the grey area with effort…but far enough that I often do not even wish to.  What makes it all particularly vivid is the knowledge that he is in the process of falling for someone as well — his away messages make that clear.  For several days, he had "Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely daughter/Girls as sharp as her are something rare," which was sufficient for me to be fairly sure.  The moment I realized that I was in trouble was when I checked it yesterday (I number among the ranks of compulsive away-message checkers, although I hesitate to use the word compulsive, it’s not a real compulsion) and it had changed.  It now read "I pray you, do not fall in love with me/For I am falser than vows made in wine."  And it felt like my sternum was pouring out hot liquids and flooding my ribcage…I was completely shocked by the intensity of my response.  I still don’t know why I reacted that way.  I had already known there was someone, there was no new information here.  Except perhaps how badly I wanted that someone to be me.
 
As always, I could make up reasons why that someone is likely to be me.  I’m very good at that.  This time, the best reason is that this seems to be a new thing for him, and I am the only person I know of with whom he has recently begun to spend more time.  And yes, his behavior towards me has changed.  But that is just as likely to be because of our new religious/spiritual connections and not because of anything else.  Just because I can come up with reasons doesn’t make them any more likely to be true than usual, and they have never been true before.  I am wisest to keep well out of this.
 
But do I actually want to?  Of course not.  If I still wanted not to fall for him, I wouldn’t be in the danger zone at all.
 
This has fabulous potential to be very bad.
 
–Stephanie