It's Not Love I'm Afraid Of, It's Trust
I like to write tiny poems on occasion. Lately, I’ve been writing a lot of them. Maybe because I’m dating, or maybe it’s just because I feel a sort of blossoming of spirit that shows up in poetry.
I like poetry that is easy. Small words, small thoughts, that maybe make you feel something for just a moment.
I play with the poems for a while before I post them. Maybe I write the whole thing out and chop words or play with line breaks, or maybe I worry away at one line until I figure out what it is I’m trying to say. It’s a satisfying process.
This week, I started a poem with one line. I kept returning to it, wanting to build the weighty emotion I wanted to cling to its shoulders, but I couldn’t make it work.
It was just this:
Just that one line: I am afraid of loving you.
But I couldn’t go beyond that one thought. Why? I knew there was more to the poem but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find what was next.
Until today.
I woke up and I realized it’s not the loving I’m afraid of. Loving is easy. It’s something that just happens. It’s something that IS. Loving is breathing.
Love doesn’t scare me.
It’s trusting someone that is terrifying.
This is how trusting someone feels like to me:
I look you in the eyes and my wants and needs are on a pottery platter. The platter is filled with the most precious parts of my spirit: breakable, tender things. A pink flower petal, a tea cup so fragile it’s like looking through a cloud, a small stack of pebbles that are balanced into a tiny tower, glass beads strung together with spider silk.
This is me, holding on to my platter, and then holding my platter out to you, in the hopes that you do not drop it, or even worse, that you don’t even notice it’s there.
I have held out a platter of fragile things to people I love, and they have dropped them, swept them aside, ignored them. But I keep trying, because I believe that one day, that friend, that family member, that loved one, will honor that platter, and hold it. If they drop it, I understand, it’s okay, but maybe the next time I reach out to them, there’s one less thing on the platter to make it easier to bear. And then there’s one less and one less and one less, until it’s just a platter, and nothing of importance is really offered at all.
This is a lengthy metaphor to say that I have trusted and I have been hurt. I know that trusting brings strength and foundation to any relationship, and I crave that. When you can trust someone, it’s more than a glue, it’s a magical bond. It’s comfort and safety. It’s strength.
But when that trust is violated, it can take a little of the love you have for the person with it.
With the new relationships I’m forming (and it goes beyond dating, it’s friendships and family) I feel like I am openly holding out my fragile things to people because it’s in the trust of doing that where true connection is built. I can trust you with my fragile spirit; you can trust me with yours.
That’s the bit that’s terrifying. Because what if you can’t? What if the person you want a connection with, doesn’t really want that with you? What if they’re okay with dropping the platter, because it’s just a collection of things.
So the poem, then, begins with an acknowledgment:
I am afraid of trusting you
And maybe then it continues…
I am afraid of trusting you
with Me
(and my platter of fragile things)
but I love you enough
to try.
I love you enough
to believe.
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This poem, like me, is a work in progress.
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TANYA EBY is a writer and audiobook narrator. She’s currently looking for an agent for her new psychological suspense novel. She’s building a new life where she’s open and vulnerable. That’s why, in this picture, she’s drinking a martini. Building a new life can be scary AF, and a nice martini now and then is lovely.