Sometimes we run the farthest from what feels the most amazing.

I suppose, a hundred lifetimes ago, in the moment I would never have said that I was scared; but now in looking back and seeing the way I tried to erase my tears, I see that, maybe for as long as I loved you, I was scared.

This life thing hasn’t exactly gone according to plan so far—not that I would want to change a thing about it—but sometimes it’s not that easy to call plot twist and move on. I thought that I had to wear those scars I earned forever and that they made me weaker, but now I realize that it’s only because of these marks of love lost that I have grown into the strong person I am today.

I was never scared of you, or even of losing you, but I was scared of love—and of you staying.

We all say we want love, and more than that we crave that type of connection that makes us believe in something bigger than ourselves, the one that reminds us that we aren’t just meant to live, work, and die.

But when that love really comes along, and it’s knocking on your door, it’s not always the easiest to answer.

I don’t truly know how it came to be that I pursued what scared me the most other than the fact that as much as loving you terrified me, walking away and never feeling again the way that I always do when I’m with you seemed to elicit an even greater fear.

I stayed and loved you because deep down I knew that there was never going to be another—there was no where to go but down, and I felt that how you made me feel was never going to come again in this lifetime.

Sometimes though, we try to ruin what we care about because we question our worthiness, or even how it would all work, even though that’s not a question for us to figure out.

Often times, we hear these idealistic quotes about lovers fixing and completing one another, but that was never us. I think instead, what really occurred was you took a flashlight to my gaping wounds, pointing them out to be fixed. Of course it was frustrating, but in the end, it also guaranteed that I put myself back the way I wanted to be—instead for someone else doing it for me.

Those moments—where you seemed to know me better than I knew myself—scared me because if we can’t hide our true selves from our lovers, we also run the risk of having them truly see us. And in a world that delights in the masks we’re told we should wear, there isn’t anything else that feels as vulnerable.

So maybe it wasn’t that I was really scared to love you—I was scared to love myself.

You wouldn’t accept less than all of me; it just took a long time to put my pieces back together so I had something to offer you. I never expected you to wait—after all, we spent so much time convincing ourselves we were all wrong for one another that I don’t think we ever expected to find that love had grown between us.

But like most things that end up being amazing and unexpected—it did.

I’ve tried to think back to when the fear of loving you left, but I can’t. As much as I held onto it, I think there was a point in which I realized that I couldn’t actually love if I was afraid of love at the same time.

So maybe I was scared to love you, but that never stopped me from actually doing it, even when I had no idea how to continue.

I think that is something that we all might miss when it comes to love in this life—just because we’re scared doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t. Easy is one thing and amazing is another, and for me I guess, if it hadn’t scared me a little, then how would I know it was my once in a lifetime love.

The rain is falling lightly now against my window pane and all I can do is smile, thankful that I’ve learned all I have, and grateful that no matter how scared I was at one point, I never let it scare me away from you.

Maybe the truth is that we can predict the weather but we can’t predict that great love affair, the one that forever marks a before and after—the one that we won’t forget.

Perhaps I was scared to love you at one point, but now all there is just love and that’s what truly makes it all worthwhile.

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Author: Kate Rose
Image: “Elizabethtown“
Editor: Travis May
Copy Editor: Catherine Monkman
Social Editor: Catherine Monkman