dardy asks if i have ever said “i love you” too soon. there have been times where i felt such an intensity of emotion that i did blurt out “i love you”, but i believe that at the moment that’s truly how i had felt and regardless of time, i felt it was appropriate.

that being said, i do recall rather vividly a time when i had said those three words and it was met with empty silence. no acknowledgement of what i said, no response, nothing. instead it was as if i had never said anything. this devastated me. i wasn’t sure if i was the only one that had felt that way and maybe the other person just didn’t feel anything for me…i had no idea, but i remember the first time that i had said those words and it was met with silence. i can understand a smile, i can even understand a lie because of the pressure to say something, but to just ignore it…that was painful.

painful and traumatic, really. from that moment i had a lot of questions about how the other person felt about me and that started to affect how i felt for them. walls started to build to protect myself from future pain because it seemed to be that they weren’t as into me as i was into them. i scaled back my affections and measured my feelings against theirs, trying not to overextend myself for fear of getting hurt. this, of course, backfired, because it just created a divide between us. i didn’t recognize it at the time, but trying to temper my feelings for the other person because i was afraid of getting hurt was actually making me feel less about them. that’s the only way i could put an emotional wall around myself.

the relationship didn’t last and i left that relationship with a life lesson and some emotional scarring. i didn’t realize it, but in future relationships, i grew much more cautious about showing my affection because i didn’t want to go through an incident like that again. it was only after time and some reflection that i think that i started to open up again. and the life lesson i learned was that i really need to be in a relationship with someone who is expressive about their feelings. if i don’t have that, i feel like i don’t have the emotionally connection that i need.