I Am Emotionally Holding Back, And This Is Why
By Anonymous
Love is an extremely complicated emotion we encompass as human beings. It is a feeling that is messy, crazy, chaotic at times and it is an emotion that absolutely requires patience. When we encounter such an overpowering emotion, we will give our partner everything that we possess, good and bad. We will share our stories of our first time experiencing the effect of too much liquor at too young of an age, the person whom we lost our virginity to and what we believe love truly entails.
It was love that drove me to let you in, it may of not been deep, deep under my skin and into the vessels that my blood rushes through, but I attempted and I believe an attempt is credit in itself. Love is what drove me to wonder what exactly you were doing when I was sitting in a Vietnam War lecture my freshman year of college. As I was pretending to write notes, I was wondering if you were in your daily three o’clock bumper-to-bumper traffic on route one or if you have already made it to your elliptical in your parent’s workout room, or if somewhere in your agenda, you were thinking of me just as much.
It was love that had me anxiously wait for my weekend leave at a military college; I would sit in my lectures held by retired Army veterans and fantasize about how I wanted to attempt to drunkenly let you in again as we lied on your bed with our legs tangled in with one another, hoping that I would attempt to correctly hit the bulls eye this time. Friday afternoon would come, I made sure that my dorm room was ready to pass inspection so I was granted my weekend leave with you. I was ready for more, a blacked out night of drinking, one too many shots of tequila and to feel your lips pucker my lower lip as I was crying because I failed to fully let you in again.
There was so much I needed to tell you. I needed to tell you who I really was underneath this skin of mine. What I have witnessed as a young, innocent child and the burdens of life that continued to weigh me down at the age of eighteen. Moreover, I tried. I attempted, and I failed each and every single time. I am so very sorry.
I am certain that the most hardest part of our relationship was the mere fact that I struggled to show you how vulnerable I really was at eighteen-years-old. However, I was ashamed to lie there in your bed, with my head on your chest, and emotionally expose myself to you. I wanted to have you see me as someone who was nothing but perfect, with no internal damage and no wounds for you to help heal. I feared that my damaged childhood memories would overwhelm you, scare you, and cause you to see me under a too bright of a light. Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to love you without showing you each and every one of my scars, and without explaining in great depth how I retrieved them, big or small.
I am twenty-three-years-old now and I have come to realize that love does not in fact work the way I had thought at eighteen-years-old. Love is uniting with another human being, expressing our flaws, accepting our open wounds that are in the long process of healing and showing a side to one another that we hide so deeply within ourselves because of our fear of being completely exposed and emotionally naked. Moreover, love is listening to the horror stories of my childhood, the abandonment of my mother who had later taken her life when I was just sixteen-years-old, and understanding that I have been dragged through mud and you still find my muddy and sunk-in face, beautiful.
I have learned in these past four years of being in a committed relationship with you that I still have not made it easy for you to access my deepest, opened and most infected wounds. However, I want to one day let you in, but I need you to promise and reassure me that you will still find the mud on my face to be absolutely, wholeheartedly and nothing more than flawless.
Until then, love on my part is undeniably questionable because how can someone like you, love someone like me, who keeps her wounds so deeply hidden? Whatever your reason is for still unconditionally loving me, knowing me well enough or not, I thank you. You have proved to me that you can still love someone who is in the process long process of healing. You have also reassured me that patience is a virtue, and you are still patiently waiting four years later. Again, I thank you.