MortalEnemy Sat 16-Dec-17 19:32:40

Mik, I had forgotten that I had ever contributed to other threads under the same username before this thread, as before I started this, I used to change username every couple of weeks. I’ve had dozens and dozens since I started on Mn. So, especially as I haven’t been particularly troll-aware, and it would never occur to me to check up on the ID/verity of another poster, I wasn’t aware people would search for ‘clues’. I slipped up. As you say, if I were a troll, I would have been cleverer about it all. I have not hidden the fact that I’ve obscured and altered details.



I’m not writing a novel. I don’t think I’ve ever read a romcom. I thought the first two Bridget Jones films were moronic, especially the one where she distributed bras in a Thai jail. I started the thread because I was confused about my feelings, which I thought were a dopey, one-sided teenage crush on someone I just ran into a lot, and that I was embarrassed to talk to friends about.



Nothing is made up. I live in the sticks, and on the rare occasions I need to get public transport to work in bad weather, I wear jeans and wellies and carry work clothes in a backpack, because the bus doesn’t go though the village at peak hours, and I have to walk up a footpath to an A road, and wait on a verge. If I’d been driving, I wouldn’t have had other clothes the day of the Christmas do.



But your post has made me realise I’ve been uneasy for a while about posting, even in concealed terms, about a real relationship with a real person. I probably should have stopped a long time ago, but when I’ve felt low about things, some of the regulars — you know who you are! — were so supportive and kind and funny, I got lulled back in. But even then, until I started the new thread, I didn’t know how many readers it had, and the risk being identified in RL is making me increasingly uneasy. I think this may be the moment to stop.



R is real, and he’s lovely, far more than I’ve been able to convey, and he’s human, and exasperating, and contradictory, and funny, and repressed, and tender, and it doesn’t in fact matter so much to me any more whether I ever get to kiss him. We have a connection of some deep kind. It has made my life better to have him in it. I probably owe him some privacy. I was planning to wind this down, anyway, in the near future. Thanks for the good times, everyone.