If there is one thing you should probably know about me, it is that I have never been good at loving someone halfway.
When I love you, you’ll know.
I’ll give you my time. I’ll be affectionate, sometimes more than I realize. I’ll make room for you even in the most ordinary days, and I’ll probably tell you I love you so many times that eventually, you’ll know what’s coming before I even say it.
A million I love yous might sound excessive.
But knowing myself, I’ll probably try anyway.
I think it’s because I never want the person I love to wonder where they stand with me.
I want you to feel that you belong here. That there is a place for you in my life—not because you asked for one, but because somewhere along the way, I made one for you.
And perhaps that’s also why your silence can hurt me more than I know how to admit.
I understand that love isn’t always returned in the same language. I know you may not always be as expressive as I am. There will be days when I give more, and days when perhaps you won’t have much to give at all.
I can understand that.
But sometimes, when the silence stays a little too long, it becomes louder than all the I love yous I’ve been saying.
And that’s when I begin asking questions I wish I didn’t have to ask.
Am I too much?
Do you still want me here?
Is there still a place for me beside you?
Sometimes, when I’m already hurting, those questions become less about you and more about my own worth.
That’s the dangerous part of loving the way I do.
I can give so much that, when I’m broken enough, I forget to check whether I’ve left anything for myself.
I’ve done that before.
I’ve stayed inside my own sadness, wondering whether I should have said less, cared less, reached out less. Whether perhaps things would hurt less if I could somehow teach myself to feel less.
But every time I think about it, I arrive at the same answer.
I don’t want to love you less.
I don’t think love becomes safer by giving less of it.
And I don’t want heartbreak—or even the possibility of it—to teach me how to ration affection. I don’t want to count how many times I’ve reached for you just to make sure you reached for me the same number of times. I don’t want to hold back an I love you simply because I’ve already said it more often than you have.
Love has never made sense to me that way.
If I have more love to give, I intend to give more.
Not because giving you more will make you love me back. Not because I expect the same amount returned to me.
It’s simply because it’s there.
And it’s yours.
Of course, I’m still learning that loving someone with everything I have shouldn’t mean giving away everything I am.
There is a difference.
Maybe that’s what I need to become better at—not loving less, but remembering myself while I’m loving someone else.
Because sometimes, when I’m too broken, I lose a little bit of myself. And I don’t want that either.
I want to be able to love you loudly and still hear my own voice.
I want to make a place for you without forgetting that I need a place for myself, too.
I want to give you my time without believing that every quiet moment means I’m no longer wanted.
I’m still figuring all of that out.
But I hope figuring it out never turns me into someone who becomes afraid of loving.
I hope I never become someone who measures affection before giving it, who keeps beautiful words to himself because saying them first feels too vulnerable, or who thinks caring less is somehow the same as protecting his heart.
That’s not the person I want to become.
So if you hear I love you from me for the hundredth time, let me say it.
If it becomes the thousandth, let me say it again.
And if somehow I really make it to a million… well, you already knew what you were getting yourself into.
You don’t have to answer every single one.
I just want you to know that when those words come from me, I mean them.
Every time.
Because if I love you, the last thing I ever want is for you to have to wonder whether I do.
I’ve never been good at loving halfway.
And even after everything love has put my heart through, I don’t think I want to learn how.