Three small words. I - To mean oneself. You - To mean someone other than oneself. Love - This is where it gets complicated.
In life you'll experience a lot of love in a lot of different ways. Love of objects (e.g. food, tv, film, books), love of friends, love of family, love of situations or feelings. The most difficult or awkward love to come across is the kind that has been written about for centuries, distilled through the years into plays, songs, art, sculpture: The romantic feeling of love towards a single person.
In my experience thus far (my rather limited experience, I feel I should point out) I've come to find that each one of my relationships has made me feel differently both at the time and afterwards when I look back upon them. The reasons why we love can be dependent entirely on the circumstances in our lives at the time. For me, perhaps a motivating reason is the fact that there are so very few people that I can love, up until late high school there really were no options or choices for me. So it's always on my mind that I may end up being in a relationship purely because I can...I don't doubt for a moment that I may have done this at some point.
The turning point in this methodology is college. I've yet to be at college a whole year but already I've found a surprising amount of interest expressed towards me, more than I was comfortable with at times. Naturally I dealt with it, though, and I became used to the situations I found myself in and, after a time, I found myself in a relationship with someone that I've liked for a longer time than he probably realises.
It's officially been a month today. Things are going well, nothing tremendously ground breaking has happened, I think things are nice though. I've never properly taken things slow before but I'm enjoying it, it's making me appreciate the relationship a lot more. That aside, though, the feelings that I have towards him are starting to mount up to the point where I think I want to say the titular statement of this post. We've said it multiple times when once drunk (hardly counts) and we've said it in Japanese (doesn't really count) but the difficulty I face is saying it in English when sober...and it's not because I can't say it, the part that I'm worried about is: Should I say it?
Perhaps I'm scared to say it, perhaps I'm just worried it's too soon, but there's a part of me that's holding back from saying those words to him because I don't want to scare him off. Maybe that's silly of me to think, maybe it's more likely that he'll not say it back, how am I to know?
All I know at the minute is that we both feel strongly for each other and we both have felt for each other for some time, though after a month does that really merit 'I love you'? Is it really a month though? Obviously I can't speak for him, but I know that I've had feelings for him since September, so does it count as six months for me? If that's then the case then it would count as seven months for me but only...two (maybe) for him? So am I ready before him?
Confusion. I'm confused. For once I think this is a situation that I can't really draw a clear conclusion to. Given how pretty much everything I've based my points on is based on pure feeling or speculation about another person's feelings, maybe the best course of action is to just take things as they come until an answer presents itself. Surely, in time, things will become more clear and I'll have my answer. Whether that answer is good or bad, is unknown, but I know which of the two I would prefer if given the choice.
-Aiden
