When a girl tells you she loves you

WHEN A GIRL TELLS YOU SHE LOVES YOU

Mercedes didn’t have many friends. She had three siblings, an overworking father, an absent mother and an overactive mind. She didn’t think she knew who she was so she found it extremely difficult to be herself around others. Although she had never completed any of her books, she liked to call herself a writer, she also believed she was slightly crazed.

Being the first child if her parents, she tried to support her family in any way she could, and even though she had 3 siblings, she didn’t really feel like she connected with them. Not them, not her dad, not the other part-timers at the restaurant she worked and certainly not with the people she referred to as friends. There was one person though. A guy. They’d meet up once in a while and she’d become a broken faucet, her words rushing out of her with no control. They’d argue and she’d cry whenever he disregarded her points. She’d talk about music, books, movies, beliefs, life, death. She’d talk about her confusions and even if he sometimes worsened them, she’d still go back to him. The reason was simple, he listened. He treated her well, spoke to her with respect, was nice all round and, although, she didn’t like the way he reasoned sometimes, she was still comfortable with him. “This must be what it means to be yourself”. That’s what she thought whenever she was with him. She fell in love with him, she pulled herself out, she went tumbling in again. Sometimes, she imagined what a future with him would be like. As she grew older, that love grew bigger. It grew into something else, something too precious to be ruined by something as silly as a relationship. She didn’t want him as a lover anymore, she wanted him just as he was. A friend, a brother, a mother, a teacher, a student, a child, a soulmate.

One day, during one of their conversations that stemmed up from what neither of them could ever remember she looked at him with a fond smile and said “I love you”. He played it off as a joke, but when he saw the seriousness in her gaze, he got awkward. Something came up, he had to go. He started giving excuses, reasons why he couldn’t meet up, reasons why he couldn’t talk. He grew distant, she wasn’t fine. Next thing she knew, his family had relocated, he had too. He didn’t tell her beforehand, he was just gone. That was the end of their communication. All that he left was a text message telling her that he didn’t see her that way and that she must have misread his signals.

It was after reading this that she realized that he was a nice guy through and through. He wasn’t like that to her because of any connection or whatever, what meant the world to her was a normal thing to him. That’s just how he was to everybody. Still, when a girl tells you she loves you, remove the ‘you’ in the equation. Focus on the ‘she’ and ‘love’ and understand that a person is giving a huge gift, a part of themselves, their love to you. You lose nothing if you accept or reject it. But they are already losing because they are giving out something, something special. Keep that in mind as you make your next move.

Amazingly, someone else was already giving his love to Mercedes, all she had to do was turn around, take her eyes of the gone fellow and accept it.