Fear of His Love

I really like him... Love him even... I just don't think I'm ready to let my emotional hiding place fall apart yet.

It's like a drop of water in the back of my head, and every time the drop hits the pain ripples outward. The world vibrates and becomes out of focus, people's voices blur and nothing exists anymore. Nothing except me and the water, the pain, the blur. I sway a little, lean on him; I don't think he notices. He supports my weight, either way, and he makes sure I don't fall. To him nothing is wrong, this is normal, I sway and lose ballance often enough that he doesn't worry about it anymore. I compare this painful daze with a different kind of isolated illusion: the one I get when I catch him staring at me while he chats with his friends at the other side of the room. I see him, when our eyes lock the world around us fades to black and I lose my equilibrium for a moment or two. The odd part of this is... I don't feel that childish puppy love for him. I feel something deep, something that I have to work at sometimes, and even when I don't "feel" in love with him, I want to be with him and I understand that sometimes when you love someone you won't always like them. I understand that there are some things that we both need to work on; there are demons within both of us that need some fighting. And something inside me hurts when this world fades to black around us. That something is the wall around my heart. And so here I am, comparing two entirely different kinds of pain, yet I cannot figure our which one I prefer. There is the dangerous throbbing, pulsing pain in my head, or the feared, strange, new pain around my heart. If that wall breaks, then I fear that I will break along with it, but nothing is breaking with a little headache here and there....