Thank you, Anita, for your sound analysis. Yes, my initial image of her did evolve into a “complex and true image of her.”

Perhaps it wasn’t so much her but my work in therapy that allowed me to feel so open and comfortable around her? She was safe and so welcoming…but only to a point. She would often text and call, and when I was with her, I did not feel like I was not wanted there. Yet, there was a distance between us. Her own “walls” she kept up in this brief relationship. There is much I did not know about her, and much that I was not permitted to know about her.

I feel that my double-heaping of sadness comes from how nice she was, and how comfortable I felt with. I spoke often her, and to her, about the “connection” I felt to her, but she may/did not feel the same connection. Perhaps the 5-hour first “date” with the kiss as we say goodbye spoke more to her loneliness than anything she felt towards me?

I said all that I needed to say in my lengthy email to her last night. I will leave it to her to respond if she chooses to. I don’t know if we’ll continue to hang out socially. It may take time (at least for me) if it happens at all. Fortunately, we will not likely return to the office until the summer or fall, so any in-person interaction won’t happen until then. (Unless I hopefully escape this job and find another.) Regardless, I’ll continue to treat her with respect and professionalism since we remain colleagues. Not that wouldn’t even if we were not.

Ryan