I Like You, Nothing More And Nothing Less

You’re everything I’ve always wanted but never thought I could find.

Yes, I know just how vom-worthy that statement is. But I honestly never thought I could find myself here. I was so accustomed to assuming that all I could ever be is the ultimate single girl that it was starting to become my brand. (That’s only semi-sarcastic, and I still hold onto very proudly the one time a drunk girl in my college town called me the “Carrie Bradshaw of Richmond.”)

But really, how dare you.

You had to go and make me laugh like a lunatic in public every time we’re out together. And here I am finding myself thinking about you during my 9-to-5 dream job of a lifetime. It’s how you bought me a toothbrush to keep at your place the first time I slept over, and how the morning after isn’t followed by your front door step. But instead, followed by breakfast, lunch, dinner, and another date for that next weekend. It’s the way you admitted how you told your mom about me. And if nothing else, you had to go and look like a guy who could star as “the heartthrob” in an ’80s chick flick—you’re so freaking cute, it’s lethal.

I almost want to hate you for making me feel this way but really it’s because the way you make me feel scares the shit out of me.

I’m scared I’ll start to care more as you find reasons to care less. I’m scared of falling for someone who could leave me at any given moment for God knows why.

You see, before our first date, I was advised to dive headfirst into getting to know you. To stop placing my feelings on a hierarchy and to stop measuring how much I could possibly like you or any guy who I could date. For the first time, I was going to stop with the flower-petal-picking, “I like him a little/I like him a lot” bullshit.

I was told to just try to let myself like you, nothing more and nothing less. With no hesitations, no judgments and no strings, triggers or weights from my past to pull me back.

And when I finally started to let myself do that, I found myself hanging out with a guy who makes me so happy it’s terrifying.

Vulnerability is never going to feel any less scary, whether I do everything in my power to dodge it or not.

But the moments I’m with you, all of that goes away. These feelings of doubt only creep back the minute you’re gone. All of a sudden, I turn into the crazy girl who’s so scared of losing you.

Should I have not said that? Am I coming off too clingy?

Before I know it, I find myself posing in front of you without even realizing it. Messing with my hair, playing with my dress, and doing all the things guys in the past told me were “cute.”

But that’s exactly it. I go in crazy, psycho-bitch mode the minute I feel like I’m feeling too much, instead of letting myself just be me. God forbid, who I really am scares you away. And that just goes back to what my friend advised me to do: to just bite the bullet and like you.

And the results could go two ways. This could either end as heart-wrenching, or this could evolve into the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

And if it is heart-wrenching, it’s not the end of the world. Nothing ever is.

So with that, I like you. Nothing more and nothing less.

I may be scared. But the only thing scarier than finding someone I’m crazy about, who has the potential to hurt me in the end, is conditioning myself to feeling numb to anyone who could enter my life at all.