Instead of running away from you, I find myself running toward you. Instead of shutting down and pretending I do not feel, I am learning how to miss you openly, how to let my heart stay awake instead of going numb. This transformation feels tremendous to me. It is not small, and it is not casual. It is something I have to pause and truly reflect on, because I know how deeply wired my old patterns were.

How strange it is to be afraid of the person you wanted the most. How strange that I could remember everyone except the one who mattered. Biologically I understand the why, I can explain the defense mechanisms and the survival instincts, but knowing the theory does not make the reality less painful. It feels like a curse to admit that I never entered a relationship before, and when I finally found the one who felt right, I ran for three years. I avoided you as if you were danger, when in truth you were the safest place I could have chosen.

You used to scare me. Your messages that hinted you would stay, your steady presence, your consistency, all of it unsettled me because it threatened the walls I built to survive. Back then I saw care as a threat to my autonomy, and love as something that would swallow my independence. Now I see how empty that version of independence was. If autonomy means numbness and isolation, then I would rather choose a heart that is alive with you. I would rather risk my rules being broken than keep rules that kept me small.

Those rules may have protected me at sixteen, but they suffocated me at twenty one. You did not invade my world, you grounded it. You pulled me out of my head when I was living trapped inside it, circling my own fears. You interrupted patterns that were quietly destroying me, not with force, but with presence. And for that, I am deeply grateful. Even if loving you were a mistake, I would still choose you, because this version of me is braver, softer, and more alive.

I am no longer afraid of you. I do not feel threatened by your closeness or your care. I feel safe when I talk to you, safe when you worry about me, safe when you stay. And that safety is something I once ran from, but now I recognize it as home.