I get a Visitor

I had been maintaining contact with H as she found a job after camp at a fairly intense group home, and we shared our struggles of adapting back to non-camp life.  So when H let me know that she was planning to come visit me in November, while on a trip to explore colleges in SoCal, I was thrilled.  When she showed up, we spent the afternoon and evening together.  I showed her around Hollywood, we had dinner, and a good talk.  It was a bit of an adventure to connect up with another camp friend, who she was staying with for the night, but it was a good time over all.  It was probably the first time in my life that I had been looking forward to an event that involved a girl, and the actual outcome met my expectations.  It wasn't like anything that special had happened, just than nothing had gone wrong, and I had been able to have a good relaxed conversation with her in a social situation.  I was used to girls equaling stress, and that was the first exception I had experienced in a long time.

 

The positive aspects of that experience caused me to rethink that relationship, and see further potential, even though the age gap of nearly four years seemed excessive at the time.  So I made a point of connecting up with her when I was home for Thanksgiving, but we didn't get a chance to talk much, since we got together at group Bible study with some other friends from camp.  We continued our sporadic conversation on Facebook, and I was looking forward to seeing her when I returned home again for Christmas.  We didn't end up getting back together until the camp staff reunion.  It was good to see everyone again, and hang out together.  But H didn't seem interested in spending any time together, and it was easy to see that her focus was elsewhere.  But I hadn't had any contact with P in the intervening months, so her presence there led to some good conversations.  She being a bit older and more mature than H was also very much appreciated at that moment.

 

The weather was pretty intense, and we ended up being flooded in for a while, but I did make it home late that night after the retreat was over.  The next evening, I had a phone call with H, where we clearly defined our relationship, as just being friends.  Being pushed away is never enjoyable, but all things considered, it went fine.  It was just a return to exactly where we had started, prior to her visit a few weeks before.  That conversation was probably the most direct one I had ever had about relationships up to that point, and it established the foundation for a close friendship that we developed over the next few years, without the distraction and stress of romantic possibilities.  Any objective examination of the situation would have revealed many reasons why the two of us were incompatible.  And while I had previously recognized those issues, I had begun to overlook them after how well her trip to come visit me had gone.