At what point does the affection of friendship turn into romantic love? For me, I think it must have been back towards the end of February when I first had an idle daydream about the possibility of meeting you, in which I wondered if we could have the same chemistry in real life as we seem to do online. Over time, the daydreams got more purposeful, a little more intense, and then before I knew it I had all these feelings for you that I didn’t know what to do with. They were the only sort of feelings that really mean anything – you know, the completely irrational kind. So I ran those feelings through my rational filter a few times but couldn’t make sense of them, and they refused to budge on their own. Not knowing what to do with them, I crammed them into a sealed box and stowed them in the attic.

But they weren’t dead relics. They were very much alive with minds of their own. They escaped their box, then they bred and now the attic is full of them. I try my hardest to ignore the din they make but it’s near impossible to do so. Occasionally I go up there and give a few of them attention; stroke them, tickle their chins, rub their bellies and scratch their ears. They purr so loudly. Each time I do that it is harder to drag myself away from them. I so want to cuddle them, bring them down from the attic and give them the attention that they deserve, make them a part of my everyday life. Welcome them, instead of resisting.

I have come to realize that the feelings are not going to go away until I know whether or not they are reciprocated.

If they’re not, I can begin to let them out, to set them free. I can get back to what this was meant to be. Believe it or not, I really did just want a friend who would appreciate me as I am, who would enjoy my company as much as I enjoyed theirs. Sounds so simple but it has been such a rare thing in my life to find someone who is even vaguely on the same wavelength, who can offer me what I need, and I them.

If they are reciprocated, then I will be so happy to just bask in the glow of mutual love and affection. We don’t necessarily have to act; there are so many obstacles in the way of contemplating whether we should or could ever be anything other than what we are, and we may find that we have no wish or desire to remove any of them. But it would feel so good to be able to openly cherish what you mean to me, rather than trying to keep a lid on it because I’m afraid it might be inappropriate or unwelcome and spoil the friendship that we’re building.

You have way too much on your plate to deal with at the moment, without me adding this on top, so I won’t be sending this to you. I will wait a few more months and see if the answers naturally reveal themselves when things have calmed down. But if they don’t, and my feelings remain as they are now or run any deeper, I may well just have to risk it. I need to reclaim my attic space.