When I was little I dreamt of falling in love. Love was something my young brain couldn’t quite comprehend, although it desperately wanted to. I wanted to dig my small hands into the sticky, gooey pit of love and smear it all over my body. They say your body is a temple, and I wanted to finger-paint the walls of my temple red with love, to cover every surface of my being with love, to totally and completely embrace love. My mother would tell of how she met my father, and I would slip into my own unconscious world and dream of one day meeting a boy and starting my own family. I would lock myself in my room and read for hours, watch movies, and daydream of how one day my very own Prince Charming would come riding into my life on his white horse and kiss away the pain of reality. Then I turned seventeen and had my first real experience with the word “love.”
The first time a boy told me he loved me, my world came to a crashing halt. Words became lost in the dusty labyrinth of my mind, trapped behind the cold steel prison bars of my teeth, and the only response I was able to mutter was, “No, you don’t.” Immediately and instinctively, I denied him the right to do so. How dare he have the audacity to love me before I ever got the chance to love myself? As he looked deep into my tired eyes, a part of me desperately wanted to give in to his sincerity, to tell him that I loved him back… but I couldn’t. Something was stopping me, is still stopping me, and I have yet to pinpoint exactly what that could be. As he walked towards the framed doorway of his home, silence filled my car. I sat calmly for what seemed like an eternity, the moment cycling through my brain. In the wake of his departure, I began wondering if this had all been formulated by my wild mind. I could feel the empty space growing between us. My first reaction was to distance myself from the issue, to bridge burn. There’s no way he actually meant that; we’re only seventeen. I drove off into the persistently dark night without reciprocating his words.
My friends told me that it couldn’t be that bad of a situation — after all, a boy did tell me that he loved me. What they couldn’t understand is that I couldn’t bring myself to declare love with uncertainty swelling in my brain, pounding on the curves of my skull. For weeks I stayed up late, only inducing sleep when it was absolutely necessary. The hours would tick away, leaving me behind with only the thoughts in my mind. My midnight void was filled with thoughts of him, thoughts of me, and thoughts of the six year old I used to be.
Sometimes I think about her — six year old me. She and I have grown far apart over the years, and our time together has all but faded from my memory. Six year old me would have been star struck hearing those words for the first time, but at six years old my only experience with love was loving my toys and stuffed animals. I am not six years old anymore, and it breaks my heart to think of how I am letting her down, not honoring her desire for love. I have grown to hate messes and getting my fingers dirty. However, some part of me will always want to dive head first into that vibrant red pit of love and drown myself in its contents, to take the leap. But I can’t do that, for I am not ready, and I am the only one stopping me.