I'm not sure what this is, in the past I would have called it love.

I convince myself when I'm by myself that it's just a healthy friendship, this is what friendship should be like.

I talk to you about everything and hold your secrets close.

Now making them our secrets.

I would never tell another living soul, I trust you and you trust me. 

I feel like I can finally truly be myself with you, we are so alike.

But the longer I'm around you, the more I feel that I want to be with you daily, hourly.

I told myself I couldn't fall for you, I can't ruin this amazing friendship we have.

But then you held my hand when I was so bottled with emotions and couldn't get the words out.

"Just friends, I swear guys"

You took me to your special spot to vent, how did you know I fell in love with this same place when I was a child?

So many locations connecting us to each other.

So many similarities, in each other and our past.

I have a hard time making eye contact, but with you I never want to look away.

"No I don't like him like that guys, he's just my best friend"

In that eye contact I felt my soul at peace, not at war like my past 'loves' had felt.

I don't feel those butterflies with you, I feel like I'm in my safe space.

Like a home.

"I just feel comfortable around him, its nothing"

Then my home, my person, said they felt that same way.

I was a safe space for him.

A home.

I made him feel all these things that he made me feel.

He has had these feelings for just as long as I.

Confessed he had been pushing them away and telling himself to wait, and that he would wait,

but so desperately wanted to kiss me at that very moment. 

Nothing felt real.

I had never had a kiss like this.

“Don’t be silly he doesn’t like me like that, he's just joking around”

Everything, my exact wishes, had all just been shown to me.

His hand on my cheek, my lips on his lips.

It was like floating down a soft stream with great beautiful willows on either side of the bank casting a warm shade over you during a spring sunset. 

It was like hearing the rain fall on a tin roof during those late summer nights after pulling a long drag off a fresh cigarette.

Who could ever willingly hurt this beautiful human being.

“Oh god, I think I might like him”

I’ve known this for weeks now, I like him.

But I am so scared to be falsely in a state of love only truly felt by me. 

This trauma induced anxiety wraps my mind at night when he can’t wrap me in his arms first.

The word love alone sends me into a state of panic.

What if I do love him?

“You can’t love him, you’re too young”

Even if I did, it's too soon to put that word to these emotions.

I don't want to scare him away, I can't mess this up.

But I hope like hell that whatever we have last.