I Was Fine Until I Met You

For a long time, love wasn’t something I worried about.

It existed around me but never touched me. I watched people fall into it, struggle in it, leave it, return to it. I listened to stories, gave advice I didn’t fully understand, and stayed safely outside of something that seemed both beautiful and exhausting. My days were steady. No waiting, no wondering, no emotional risk attached to another human being.

I became used to that quiet.

There is a certain peace in not needing anyone in a particular way. Nothing could be taken from me because nothing had been given.

Then someone entered my life without looking like a turning point.

It wasn’t sudden. There was no dramatic moment, no clear beginning. Just conversations that stretched a little longer each day, comfort appearing where distance used to be, and a strange familiarity forming with someone who used to be ordinary. I didn’t notice when my thoughts started including them automatically, or when small things became worth sharing only because they would understand.

Somewhere in between normal days, attachment quietly grew.

And that was when the fear began.

Not fear of them hurting me intentionally — but fear of how deeply they could, even without trying. Because the moment someone becomes part of your emotional routine, they gain the ability to leave a silence behind. A silence you didn’t have before they existed there.

I realized I was no longer standing outside love, observing it safely. I was inside it, and inside means vulnerable. Inside means there is now something to lose.

What scared me wasn’t the present. The present felt calm, natural, almost gentle. What scared me was the future — the possibility that one day this could become a memory I would have to live around. That I might wake up and carry the absence of someone who once filled ordinary days without effort.

Loving after a long time is different. You don’t fall carelessly. You understand the cost. You know healing isn’t quick when feelings settle deeply instead of briefly passing through. You know some people don’t leave loudly — they leave quietly and stay in habits, in thoughts, in places you didn’t realize you shared with them.

And maybe that’s why it feels heavier than it should.

Not because something is wrong now, but because something could be missing later.

To care is to accept a future you cannot control.

I don’t fear loving them today.

I fear learning how to exist if someday I have to do it without them again.