Since I met you, I knew there was something different about you. you were too healthy, too whole, and I felt diseased, and sickened beside you. you felt like an angel standing in front of someone who had only ever known how to survive in the dark. my deepest desire was to hold you, but I convinced myself I had no right to touch something so gentle.

It was not that I did not want you. it was that I believed I could not have you. the decision was never mine back then. fear held the pen and wrote my reactions before I could think. I did not believe I had the capacity to love, to love without destroying what I loved. the life I had lived had trained me to expect isolation, had woven a deep belief in me that I would die alone, untouched and untouched by anyone.

So I killed the possibility before it was even born. before my mind could imagine a future with you, I shut the door. before stolen glances could soften into admitted affection, I buried them. before affection could grow roots and call itself love, I uprooted it myself. I ran before I ever stood still long enough to understand why I was running.

For three years I forgot the days we first met. it feels impossible to admit that, but it is true. something inside me wanted you erased. now I understand that I was never afraid of anyone the way I was afraid of you. my brain did not panic at danger only, it panicked at goodness. when I was sick back in university, I thought I was simply overwhelmed. now I know I was avoiding you, first unconsciously, then deliberately.

I avoided you more than anyone else. not because you harmed me, but because you could reach me. it took me until I was twenty one to understand what fear really meant. it took three years of numbness and confusion to decode it. I would spend my days busy and distracted so I would not have to think. at night the questions would return, heavy and unanswered. I lived not understanding what had happened to me during that stage of my life, and that ignorance was tearing me apart from the inside.

People remember their past as something beautiful. I was fighting mine as if it was trying to kill me. living without understanding yourself is a kind of violence. avoiding parts of your own story creates a fracture in your identity. I felt dead inside because feeling the full pain seemed unbearable. in 2023 I did not know why I was collapsing internally, why fear was devouring my thoughts. now I see it more clearly. if I feared something that deeply, it meant I wanted it. and what I wanted was you.

Before I even knew I loved you, fear had already taken control. biologically my brain was trying to protect me by suppressing what felt overwhelming. you brought emotions that I never experienced, in metaphor, the monster wanted me to forget you. in psychology, it was an emotional shutdown that lasted three years. in art, it was like losing an entire chapter of memory. I forgot that you were once my rose, something I wanted to understand, something I might have wanted to keep forever.

I lived those three years trying to understand what changed in me. something shifted completely and I became more numb than I had ever been. on the surface I was functioning perfectly. I learned the skills I wanted. I joined the places I dreamed of. I worked on projects that excited me. to everyone else I looked disciplined and successful. inside, I was fractured and hollow.

Now I see what I lost back then. I lost parts of myself. I lost friends and places and versions of who I used to be. but most painfully, I lost you. I thought it was nothing at the time. I convinced myself it was just another interaction that faded. but it was not nothing. it was something I never healed from. the day I let go of your memory was the day fear fully took over my life.

I am sorry, darling, that I lost you before I understood what you were to me. I did not have the language for love. I did not have the language for fear. I only had confusion and survival instincts. I was not choosing distance because I did not care. I was choosing distance because I did not know how to survive closeness.

When I traveled outside Sudan, I was able to function. I worked, I built, I adapted. but I felt nothing from the inside. biologically my mind was overloaded and protecting itself. metaphorically the monster numbed me so I would not break. my friend Yahia used to tell me this, that sometimes all what the monster was trying to do it to protect you. I understood it intellectually, but now I see it in my own life.

The monster was not evil. it was trying to save me from pain I did not know how to carry. but in doing so, it turned me into someone who felt nothing. and when you feel nothing, you hurt others without even realizing it. I became a version of myself that could not hold anyone gently. I pushed away what I wanted most.

Now I am learning to live without that monster making my decisions. I am learning that fear does not always signal danger. sometimes it signals desire. sometimes it signals love. and if I ever run again, I want it to be toward you, not away from you.