Freaked Butterfly
What on earth do you do when someone tells you that they love you? Off hand?"One more thing. I love you."
In a car, just as you're about to leave in a rush.
There's nothing you can say. And when you ask them about it, you suddenly realise that you're making a big deal about something that perhaps you shouldn't. And then you quaver, worried that you're back on that rollercoaster of thinking before you leap.
Despite my qualms, I was ready to try. And it was somehow perfectly safe. Despite you realising after a while that he was truly genuine and serious about you. Despite all that, it was still ok, because you could argue it all away. Interest is one thing, love another.
What am I supposed to do now that I know that you love me?
I'm absolutely terrified. I'm terrified of stuffing this up. Petrified of ruining this. You've done everything right, shown that you cared, had my interests at heart, been my chauffer and made me laugh. Despite your age, or maybe because of your age, your crazy talk makes you absolutely adorable. Your language surprises me sometimes. Your vigour is impressive. I have wondered in my mind if I could say those words to you. But always I was safe behind the protective shield. We are just going slow, we are just testing things out.
And for once in my life, I don't have to question anything. For the past week, I've just had to react to you, and that's all. Right now we are dangerously close to bordering on past relationship country, where I overanalyse and think it all out to the point where I will essentially destroy this relationship, or whatever 'this' is.
I realised this afternoon, or maybe sometime last night, that perhaps part of the reason why I hesitate around you, is not so much that I'm scared of loving someone, it's just that maybe I just don't want to be in that situation anymore, where I can be torn apart. You offer me a place of solace. A place where I can be myself, and you will care and protect me. I am constantly amazed at how willing you are to offer me things that I had wanted from my ex who had never given me any of it.
You will brave my mother in the face of everything just for impulse alone to see me. You will drive for 30 minutes just to do something insane like that. You woke up at dawn just so you could drive me into the city to buy Sarah tickets, and braved an extra hour of traffic in order to do so. You even voluntarily offered to drive me into work every morning - if I wanted to take you up on the offer. You've treated me to dozens, well maybe not dozens, but plenty of lunches and a dinner here and there. You were checking out Opera sites today to see what other operas we could both go to.
I know you're genuine. But you voiced your love to me this evening, and after that fumbled phone call, I don't really know what to do. I'm shocked. You, a grown man, in love with me. What are the odds? When the best looking guy in the entire company who is younger than you believes that I am too young, and has voiced this opinion out loud.
You. love. me. And you mean it. What on earth am I supposed to do with that? You've basically put into harsh reality what is actually going on. Whereas earlier I could just delude myself into a false place of security, where I could have time and space to fall in love with you on my own, suddenly I am pushed into wicked freefall. Suddenly there are expectations hanging over my head. Not that they were never there, just that they were always unvoiced. And in you voicing them, well, it's all real now. If I change my mind, we're screwed. Really screwed.
You ask if I'm angry at you for telling me. How can I be angry? How can anyone be angry that someone loves them? It's just that I wish in some ways you hadn't told me. But at the same time, if it felt right at the time, then who am I to judge? Therefore, the only thing that stuffed it all up was that last phone call, and my stupid desire to take your answer apart. I watched myself gingerly ease back into that 'deconstruct' mode that I so easily fell into with my ex.
And what's been amazing about us, is that there is none of that. We seem to work in tandem. Or at least as if there is an invisible tether that ties us together and we seem to work off each other like someone stretching an elastic band. We're bound inextricably.
I guess you've just frightened me, and put into sharp relief what may already have been underlying all of this, but just unspoken.
I don't know what to do with you now. I can't leave it there with no response. I can't ignore your plea. But I can't answer it either. I'm not ready to. I can't. I don't want to go there. I don't want to love like that. See, there's affection in the guise of love, and then there's love in the guise of love. Affection is easy to put out. Love, not so much. And I don't want to put out anymore.
Technically we have only been testing this out for a week. And you're already declaring your love. What do I do with this information? How do I process it? I'm so thrown and absolutely terrified. This is going way faster than I ever, ever imagined. I just want to run away now. I don't know what to do.
posted by Enigmatic Butterfly @ 11:07 pm
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