I remember this one clearly. now that I see things without distortion, I understand that before I began avoiding you subconsciously, I was avoiding you intentionally. this was not an accident. it was not confusion. it was a decision. I was running from you because I knew exactly what you were.

You seemed like the kind of person I could talk to about anything. do you think I discovered that energy only after fear crept in and I forgot you. no. I felt it from the very first days we talked online. and when you approached me that day to say thank you for the presentation, it was confirmed. something aligned too quickly, too naturally.

Yes, I am an introvert. but I read rooms with precision. I analyze people almost instantly. I can tell whether someone fits into the category of friend, colleague, or something fleeting. with you, none of those categories worked. you did not fit into anything familiar. even before we had long conversations, I knew you were someone I could speak with endlessly.

That is when I started to pull back. consciously, I told myself I was prioritizing my future. I told myself this person is too good, too distracting, too powerful. I do not want to lose years to something that could consume me. maybe that was the narrative I created back then. maybe I thought I was being disciplined. in reality, I was trying to control the intensity before it controlled me.

If you pay close attention to yourself, you know this too. when you meet someone, it takes only seconds to sense how far you could go together. with most people, there is a ceiling. you can measure the depth, you can see the edges. with you, I could not find the bottom. I could not see the limit to how loud, how wild, how alive we could become together.

You were the first girl I ever met where I could not locate the boundary. there was no clear end to the madness, no final level of intensity. so I tried to shrink myself. I played quiet. I acted dumb. I kept things respectful and restrained. I wanted to keep you, but not awaken the part of us that could set everything on fire.

Subconsciously, I traded my own joy for protection. I chose safety over expansion. with you, there was no bottom to how far we could fall. with you, there was no ceiling to how high we could rise. with you, growth did not have a container. and that terrified me more than anything.

That is why I ran. not because you were wrong for me. not because we were incompatible. but because you represented experiences I had never felt before. you represented a version of myself that was unmeasured and uncontrollable. and I was not afraid of you. I was afraid of what I could become with you.