To the Girl Who’s Afraid to Love…

I’m not afraid of commitment, I’m afraid of surrendering control too quickly, of placing my heart into hands that won’t know how to hold it. -Beau Taplin

To the Girl Who’s Afraid to Love,

Who can blame you if you’re a little untrusting, or a lot untrusting? If you’re a bit closed off or mysterious?

Your fear of being vulnerable is valid as is your process of moving slow. Nobody needs to understand your heartbreak for it to be real, for it to hurt. Their heartbreak is as unique as yours.

You're afraid to let anyone in, fearing as soon as you do they'll walk right out. Maybe that's not something a lot of other people fear, telling you, "People leave, that's life. They just weren't meant to be in your life." But you know that with each person that leaves, you lose a piece of yourself you cannot get back. They walk away with memories only you will remember, they walk away with time you can never get back, they walk away with secrets they never deserved to know.

Maybe you love too hard and show too little. You will always feel more than the other person, you will always fall harder than the other person. You love slowly, but when you do you love with every fiber in your being, and it will take you ages to lose that feeling, even long after they lost that feeling for you.

Maybe you still love all the past ones who stopped loving you years and years ago. Maybe you still love so many of those people you refuse to love anyone else, because you know you'll never recover.

You've built walls, strong, tall walls that no one wants to break down. They skim you on the surface, but refuse to dive any deeper. Their love has only ever been surface-level ready; surface-level worthy. Most just take a look at those walls and run away, they won't take time to break those down, now will they? Mental walls, emotional walls, physical walls. They will decide to take a journey around your estate, only to find walls with no doors. They'll stop and look briefly in the barred windows, but see nothing of necessary interest or want. They'll try their easy way; prying at the bars, softly at first and then harshly, no longer caring for what's really inside you. They chip away at the walls, expecting a hole, only to find thicker walls. Their patience is non-existence. They do not care for you emotionally, nor do they care for you mentally. They'd rather strip you down, watch you crumble as they have their fun, and then... leave. Maybe what you need is not someone who will break your walls, but instead, to climb them.

Those walls have been up for so long you've begun to wonder whether or not anyone will ever take the time to carefully break them down. You acknowledge how hard and long it would take for those walls to crumble, but you've been broken too many times before to not have them up. You want to believe that the next guy that comes along will be the one to slowly began chiseling away the past lies and hurt that so many others have left you with. You want to believe he'll look at you with wander and awe, despite the walls hiding half of what you are. And when he knows you're ready, he'll slowly began climbing his way over.

The one who dares to climb is the one who dreams of staying... no matter the amount of time it takes for him to reach the other side.