liking someone

It starts casual, it always does. No strings attached, no feelings formed, and no worry of loss. Before you know it - suddenly you are thinking about them throughout the day. Wondering if they’d laugh at the same thing you are, what their opinion on something might be… The strings of attachment start budding.

It’s exciting, or at least it better be or else why are you pursuing? Hopefully they’re interesting, they have hobbies you’ve never thought of, they have stories that captivate you. The person you fall in love with should be all of that and more, but fear can come to play when the risk of them not returning those feelings comes to mind. The strings of attachment come from your heart, and that can be a vulnerable place of not guarded properly.

Those budding strings can quickly become a rope, and without realizing you find yourself hanging from it. Anxiety shouts at you to step in faster, harder, and to secure their end of the rope so the risk of pain, of loss, is wiped away. The idea of someone is a powerful drug. Your mind may build a version of someone you’ve only just met, filling in the gaps of their personality with the limited information you know about them.

Let this serve as a reminder to yourself, just as they are getting to the chance to fall for you, you are deciding if you want to fall for them. Love needs room to breathe. It may move and weave in ways you never expected, and if you’re binding it with those ropes it may never bloom. Or worse, you find yourself so focused on holding on, you don’t realize you never wanted what was at the other end in the first place.