I Can’t Believe You Care

I can’t believe anyone would fall for someone like me. I get moody. I have trouble trusting. I don’t have good control over my temper. I am suspicious. I am jealous. I am annoying and loud and negative. I cannot see why anyone would want to choose me when they have a million other options. I don’t understand the draw.

You could spend all day listing off the reasons why you like me, but I will still have trouble grasping what you see in me. You think I’m smart, but I disagree. You think I’m funny and strong and sensitive, but I don’t agree with any of that either. I don’t think I’m good enough for you, even though you keep swearing I’m the one who is out of your league.

I have trouble believing you mean it when you say I am the most beautiful girl you have ever seen, because I don’t see myself that way at all. I don’t consider myself pretty. Half of the time, I don’t even consider myself decent. I have low self-esteem. I compare myself to every other woman who walks past and all of them are better looking than I am.

I can’t believe you when you say that you are going to stay with me forever because there is a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that I am stupid to think this relationship is going to last a lifetime. I am a skeptic. A cynic. I expect the worst to happen, especially to me.

I roll my eyes whenever one of my friends claims they have fallen in love with someone they are going to live happily ever after alongside, because I assume they are only fooling themselves, so who am I to think that my own relationship has what it takes to survive the years?

I can’t believe you think I’m worth your time and energy and effort. I can’t believe you still like me, even though you have seen the most awkward and embarrassing pieces of me. I can’t believe you are considering spending the rest of your life alongside me, even though you know exactly what you are getting yourself into.

Even after all of this time, I still can’t believe you have such strong feelings for me — or maybe I don’t want to believe it because if I believe it, it will hurt even worse when I lose you. I am scared of getting heartbroken. I don’t want you to catch me off guard by abandoning me after I finally learn how to trust you. I don’t want to look like an idiot.

There is a part of me that is still convinced you secretly don’t care — but you keep proving me wrong. You keep treating me better than you treat yourself. You keep loving me the way I deserve. You keep showing me that maybe it’s okay to trust, to love, to think this relationship is going to last for our entire lives.