I don't need you, I want you. I want to stop being sorry. I want to stop blaming my past. I want to embrace each and every moment with you and feel the way I felt when innocence was still a recognizable concept to me. But I think most of all I just want you to understand.

In saying that, I don’t intend to lead into the conversation of “who’s been hurt worse”. Let’s face it: there were instances in both of our past years that have left us wondering if we’re ever going to date again. What I’m referring to now is what I’ll try to tell you over and over again throughout our relationship, but will never be able to find the right words. You may never know how difficult it was for me to open myself up again, and that’s just something I’ll have to accept not getting credit for. Maybe it’s worth it, maybe it’s not – but I knew I would regret losing the chance to find that out for myself. Something about you made me feel like it was okay to step forward into the unknown again, but with someone new. Something about you reminded me of the unrivaled freedom I felt when I could laugh without restraint, or back when I could feel the rush of blood to my head as my heart began to flutter. All of these feelings and strong emotions are lost within a realm of youth that can never be rekindled for me, though I have vivid memory of what they feel like. I’m not cold, I’m numb.

I’m not upset that I can’t feel the same exact way that I used to feel, because I know now that when I do have a heightened sense of emotion, it’s raw and perhaps more importantly, wise. Experience in the field of true, heart-wrenching hurt has led me to surmise some of the more profound realizations of my life. However, I can’t help but to sometimes retreat back to a time when I wasn’t so lucky to be able to use my past to my own advantage. I’ve ruined more relationships, opportunities, and pushed away more people than I’d like to admit. And that’s okay. Because it’s all led me here, where I am today – with you.

Which brings me to the moment where I must underscore the fact that I do still, much to my dismay, get stuck in the quicksand of anxiety that overwhelms me from the inside out. I am so fearful of what another pang of hurt will do to me, that I suppress every ounce of inexplicable emotion and simply filter it out in segments, as it’s needed. Which means sometimes I feel like a robot, other times I feel like a grade school girl getting her first kiss on the cheek; I turn my head off and my heart on and vice versa. The problem with this, though, is that I’m still in the process of figuring out how to operate both my head and my heart simultaneously. That’s the storm raging inside of me when I see you look at another girl, when I take something you say personally, or when I ask you a dozen times if you’re sure you’re still into me. I don’t have the luxury of knowing that you’re a genuine person who just wants to make me happy, because all I’ve ever come up with is excuses for why people have left. After a while, I’ve begun to become accustomed to blaming myself, and that became what I know.

So, before you drop another comment on how insecure I am, or how I need to stop being so hard on myself, remember this: I don’t need you, I want you. I’ve been kicked while I was down and have gotten back up long before you were in the picture. But I want you. I want you to tell me its okay, I want you to put the effort into making me believe how much you care about me. I want you to fall in love with me, I want to be the one you show off to the world. I want you to know that even though I’m terrified, when I look at you and smile, you’re looking directly into the most raw, untapped portion of my heart. But I think most of all I just want you to understand.