I Hope You Will Love Me Despite My Flaws

Sometimes I get sad for no reason. It just brushes over me like paint for a few hours or days and then it rinses off. Nothing you say or do can make me feel better. But I would like you to try. I would like you to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. And when I don’t believe you, I hope you are patient enough to continue holding me without frustration and with the knowledge that I will come back to you as soon as it is all over.

I am not a cute type of quirky girl. My quirks are awkwardly ugly. My quirks are jokes that take me an extra five minutes to explain the punch line while breathlessly laughing to myself the whole time. My quirks are saying sorry too many times for things I shouldn’t be sorry about but keeping quiet at times when I truly need to apologize. My quirks are uncomfortable pokes and shoves at inappropriate times because I don’t know which other way to show people how happy their presence makes me.

I am not a graceful girl. I am the girl who eats too much and then complains about it afterwards while holding the side of my stomach. I am the girl who drinks until I am on the verge of collapsing and demands attention for it. I am the girl your mother warned you about becoming if you continued slouching and didn’t watch your weight. I am the girl your father secretly loved in high school but was too scared to say it because athletes don’t date frumpy girls.

At times, my affection will seem overbearing. It will swallow you whole and push past every boundary you’ve ever made. It will feel uncomfortable and make you want to leave me behind. But without it, you feel empty. I will always feel like too much or too little. Some days I will bring you breakfast in bed and rub your back. Other days, I will curl up in a corner and want my own space, away from you. It will confuse you but I hope that you will bear with it because deep down, we will both know that it’s what you need.

Sometimes I will need my family and friends more than I will need you. I will look for refuge in other people in whom I have made homes before I met you. I will need my mother’s cooking or my father’s insight. I will need my best friends to hold me and tell me that the world is not as dreary as it seems. It’s not that you aren’t enough. It’s just that these people are a part of me. An intangible thread has already woven its way between our souls. I hope you grow to love them too.

And I will attempt to talk both of us out of loving each other. I will give you a list of reasons for why it would never work. Why I am not worth your time and why you should find someone who is prettier and won’t over think until it frustrates you enough that you scream. I will give you reasons why you should walk away and why I should too. But I hope you won’t. I hope you will sit me down and tell me that you don’t want anyone else and you refuse to let go. It will be confronting for me and I will cry at your honesty. But we will both know it’s what I need.