Words To Set You Free..

Am I just a sucker who attaches too much importance to those three words….or perhaps to the act of saying them?

I remember with the ex, I felt it. I really wanted to say it. But some part of me, my head I’ll bet, couldn’t. How was I sure? How are we sure? All I could say to her was, “I’m in like with you”. I don’t know what made me feel like those words were so special to me. But I know they are.

I remember telling my ex that a million times, hoping in desperation that it would convey everything I felt. I have never ever been good at saying what I feel. Heck, the first time I felt something for a girl, I wrote her a stupid letter (which I hope she still has…it would be nice). And I remember exactly where I gave it to her and in retrospect, it was ironic it was in the library. God, the memory still makes me want to pass out or go screaming for cover.

The other time I wanted to tell someone I liked them, I wrote and wrote and well, even that left me mucked up. How do you sit someone down and tell them how you feel? That all you want to do is spend every minute of the day walking around normally but have their hand in yours so you can point out every single thing you see and have them react and talk back, that all you want is to be the one that makes them laugh or that theirs is the face that you want to fall asleep watching just to find it, if anything, more beautiful in the morning? Is there any way on earth to make it easier to tell a person that you are so completely fascinated with them, the way they talk or smile or think that you know every feature on their blessed face and you can see it when you close your eyes…and that you hope to see them standing there when you do open your eyes again?

But you have to.

It is infinitely worse and worthy of contempt to not tell a person that. I can think of just one person who loved me. And it was a glorious feeling. And if she had kept that hidden from me, it would have been unfair. And I believe the opposite is true – when is it a bad thing to tell someone you may be in love with them? Is it ever a bad thing? If someone I say it to thinks it is, I don’t want to be with that person any more.

And of course, agonizing over it and treasuring that small sliver of hope is impossible. It is so overwhelmingly all consuming that either you act on it or let it go. Now I have never been one to back down and “let things go”. Not until its over and the fat lady sings. And I don’t like fat women singing, not until I’m dead and I got a long ways to go baby!

You hear those words from a person so many times and me, I believe that those words are enough to make anything work. Aren’t they? I guess not, point in case, my last relationship. And she was the only woman I ever said them to (okay, said them aloud to). But I guess I was naive enough to believe that that was all that it took and nothing else mattered. I seriously believed that. Now am I stupid to continue attaching so much importance to those words? I think she said them to someone else. But in doing so, she destroyed what those words meant to me and you would think that would be enough to shatter what I am afraid I might call an illusion. In saying that out to another guy, she tore down what those words had come to mean coming from me. And they just watered down everything I would feel when she said them to me – they became white noise. And I would starve for the way they made me feel when she used to say them but no matter how hard I tried, they never felt the same coming from her. I guess that has helped me move on. She tore down something special and I could not forgive her for that.

But either we remain on the ground, waiting for a Mack truck to run us over…or we get up, make sure nothing is permanently broken, dust ourselves off, stand by the side of the road, thumb in the air hoping to catch a break.

And until I do, I will wait, not like a stupid wooden post but doing everything I can to make sure it sees me and realizes im the best thing out there. Period

And that’s when I will stop walking and will end up flying.