I’ve been thinking this week about how much I struggle to articulate my feelings because I am afraid of rejection. In all my relationships, I never want to be the one who feels too much or too obviously, because I don’t want to be judged or misunderstood. It’s the reason I am very slow to accept new friends, and the reason I let people get away with hurting me because I would rather not “make a scene.”
It’s also the reason I haven’t dared to open myself to a romantic relationship. I have this idea in my head that I am really difficult to understand, and that that is some type of flaw, so I don’t want to risk putting myself in a situation where I would be misunderstood, rejected or hurt. I operate with the worst case scenario as the most likely outcome.
On an intellectual level, that makes no sense. Why would I expect the worst thing to be the best thing that could possibly happen to me? On an emotional level, while I am terrified of actually ending up in one of these terrible situations and not being able to handle it, I also want to be able to experience the situation positively. That is to say, I want to like a boy and not be worried that he doesn’t like me back or that he is just biding his time until he can break up with me in a spectacular display of ultimate rejection.
These have all been abstract ideas until just over two months ago, when a boy who I once thought I might like came back into my life. I didn’t have to start a conversation with him or give him my WhatsApp number, but something inside me said “do it… it can’t hurt to try.” Before I could really understand what was happening, he and I were sharing deep thoughts and feelings. Here I am doing exactly what I have been avoiding for years: liking a boy, and enjoying the feeling of being liked back. It’s so strange. It’s also really exciting.
But whenever I am happy about something, I start getting anxious about it being taken away from me.
What it comes down to is this: I hope he will have patience with me. I hope he will come to understand that the feelings that I do share with him are like little pieces of me that he should be careful with. It’s so much bigger than just these few paragraphs, but this is a start.
I came across ‘Strong as Glass’ by Goapele while I was thinking about all this, and by the second chorus I was in tears. Goapele gets it.
Nkhensani Manabe 