halfway

i don’t know how to do this halfway.

i spent twenty minutes today trying to figure out how to write a text. not because i didn’t know what to say. because i knew exactly what i wanted to say and i was trying to figure out how much of it was allowed. something simple. how was your day. are you okay. the kind of thing that shouldn’t take twenty minutes. but i was sitting there, typing and erasing, trying to make myself sound like someone who cares a normal amount. a safe amount. i don’t know what a safe amount is. i never learned it.

when i care about someone, i want to know everything. not the highlight version, not the “i’m fine” version. i want to know what’s actually sitting on them at 11pm. i want the conversation that starts about nothing and ends somewhere neither of us planned. i want to ask how your day was and actually mean it, not just fill the silence with it.

and i’ve been told, in a hundred quiet ways, that this is too much. not in those words. nobody ever says it in those words. they just start replying shorter. they just stop bringing the real stuff. they let the conversation become weather and updates and you’re supposed to not notice, and you’re supposed to adjust.

i can’t adjust. i’ve tried. i’ve sat with my phone in my hand and practiced being the kind of person who doesn’t need the whole thing. just be normal. just reply. just keep it light. and every time, it feels like holding my breath underwater and calling it swimming. i want it fully. i do. but fully is the thing that has cost me before. i’ve been all the way in with people who left. not dramatically, not with a fight. they just slowly stopped being there, and i was still the one holding everything when there was no one left to hold it for.

that does something to you. it teaches you that your all is not enough to make someone stay. and once you learn that, you can’t unlearn it. it just sits behind every conversation, behind every “how was your day,” behind every good morning, whispering: be careful. you’ve been here before. you know how this ends.

so now i’m stuck between two things that are both true. i don’t know how to love at half. and i’m terrified of loving at full. i can’t shrink myself down to fit into whatever this careful, polite, measured thing is. i can’t text back in two words when i have twenty waiting behind them. i can’t ask how you are and not care about the answer. that’s not stubbornness. that’s just how i’m wired.

but i also can’t pretend that being all the way in doesn’t scare me. because the last time i gave everything, the room was very quiet and my hands were very full and there was no one to hand any of it to.

i don’t know what the answer is. i don’t think there is one yet. i just know that i’m sitting here with a text i’ve rewritten four times, trying to sound like someone who isn’t scared, trying to be casual about a person i’ve never once been casual about.

i don’t know how to do this halfway. i never did. and the terrifying part is i still don’t want to learn.

— K.S.