When most of your life you’ve been the person who pushes everyone away who tries to get close to you, you already fully understand why people leave and give up on you. You’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s just been that way for you for the longest time and you’re unwilling to change now. You tell yourself that it’s exactly why you built all those walls up, not allowing yourself to the possibility of vulnerability.

You have fully convinced yourself that love is a game of mind. And a perfect relationship is maybe a myth but it’s also thinking ahead about every single thing that will or won’t work. You want to address it with well-thought-out plans, like how it should be or how you expected it to be. You think about all possible scenarios of how a date will and should go and come up with an endless amount of action steps depending on the scenario you formed in your head, because you’ve already assumed it’s not going to end well.

You pride yourself with the ability to manipulate a conversation to get what you want. And you’re certain that you have your head above your heart, keeping yourself constantly in-check in crucial romantic moments everyone else warned you about. Because you’re smart and will never lose your senses in situations you can’t control.

But suddenly, with one of fate’s playful attempts to catch you off guard, you see yourself attracted to that one person who showed efforts, who never gave up in pursuing you, and who made it seem like you matter enough for them to be persistent. You know, the one you least expected. They sometimes cross your mind in the middle of the day. You look forward to their good morning and good night texts even if you tell yourself you don’t care, and if they didn’t happen you wouldn’t be bothered. Yet behind all that, you know you don’t want them to stop trying.

Then one day, you start to believe that your strong facade was worth taking down a notch. And you realise that maybe a relationship and love isn’t always about being logical, analysing situations obsessively for reasons they’re not right and it won’t work out and ultimately pushing someone away before you find out their flaws or they upset you somehow ….. so you want to try and make sense out of it.

You still refuse to be the girl you realise you’re turning into. You whole heartily refuse to let yourself accept that all the cheesy feelings that are seeming to surface are actually happening. You still try to disregard the thought that maybe, just maybe, it’s the first time you’ve experienced feelings like this without your mind holding you back like all the other times because you’re scared. You repeatedly tell yourself that it’s nothing. Only it’s not the same as how you thought it would be, it’s different this time around and you see a whole new side of you that you never knew existed, this time it’s calm and not scary after all.

You refuse to believe that you’re this affectionate on the inside. You feel a hint of neediness, a feeling you recognise but want to keep hidden because until now, you thought you’d managed to stop being like that. You catch yourself on a lazy Sunday wanting to see them, but you’re wishing it’s just a phase in passing or your PMS acting up and this wanting them will go away. You think that it unless you ignore it, it would only mean you have succumbed to the idea of keeping yourself open to being hurt and that is the last thing you want.

You refuse to accept that you’re becoming the one who is feeling more because you always thought of it as a weakness. You do your best to make yourself believe that you’re not becoming too attached. You distract yourself by doing other things to get your mind off the fact that you’re thinking of them too much. You can’t help but think of them every second of every day and wonder if they feel the same way. But what makes it more difficult is that they can’t find out because you can’t let them feel like they’re smothered, or worse that they’ve got you, the strong independent woman, tamed and right in their grips.

You refuse to accept that all those walls you caged yourself in don’t matter anymore. You pretend that not talking to them for a day is okay and you’re totally cool with it. But in reality, you just want someone, them specifically (of course), to see past your strong exterior and denials, and tell you that it’s okay to be scared, it’s okay to feel emotional, and it’s okay now because they’ll be there for you and with you.

Suddenly “catching feelings” will affect you in all sorts of ways. But it doesn’t make you vulnerable nor susceptible to illogical reasoning (well, not all the time anyway) But rather it keeps you afloat, inspired, and you’ll actually remember what it means to be human and take someone into consideration when you’re making big decisions other than just yourself. It’s still something you’re learning, and it’s okay even if it’s very different to how you thought it would be.