It’s Not That I’m Careless With Love, I’m Just Scared

I have always avoided feelings and usually walk out before things get complicated. But with you, these feelings snuck up during the mornings we spent in bed. Our bodies entangled. My lungs were filled with you and for the first time, I was not suffocating.

My friends always tell me, “I wish I was as careless as you” or, “I wish I didn’t get attached like you.” They don’t understand that the hardest thing on this planet for me, is expressing what a person means to me. Which comes off as “careless” and “indifferent.” Every time I begin to feel you drifting away, I find myself praying to a god I do not know. Begging him (it?) to give me the ability to verbalize how you make my heart race when your fingertips graze my skin. How your smile makes it hard to breath. How waking up next to your bright eyes fills my heart with a type of hopefulness I have never known.

I want to beg you to stay and be patient with me, because my heart is not found on my sleeve, but locked in the recesses of my mind. I hate myself for constantly needing affirmation when I am not even able to look you in the eyes and tell you how important you are to me. For some reason, I think writing love letters on your back while you sleep will suffice. My fingertips often whisper to your crooked spine that you are the best thing that has happened to me in a long, long time.

You deserve so much better.

I don’t know where this is going or how it will end and that’s what is hardest for me. So most of the time I’m bracing myself for the phone call to end it all. But I am working hard on not letting my mind go there. Because I have been scared my whole life of ever feeling this way towards someone. And I’m really fucking tired of being scared.