You know you love me
I have been alive for 23 Valentine’s Days so far, and I’ve been dateless for 21 of them. I am well aware that this statistic sounds pitiful, but I’m not sad about it. I’ve heard that Valentine’s is supposed to be a holiday about love—this was a surprise to me, because I totally thought it was about consumerism, but that’s another article—and because of the nature of the holiday, it’s only fitting that I haven’t really celebrated it, because I’ve never been in love.
Illustration: Braden Jones
I did, however, tell someone that I loved him. It was all very romantic until he didn’t reply.
This may come as a shock, but I’m not exactly known to be forthright with my feelings. Aaron was a lot like me in this respect. We hung out as “friends” for months and months, because neither of us was willing to put ourselves out there and ask each other where this was headed.
Just over half-a-year into our relationship, I could tell Aaron’s feelings had shifted—and not for the worse. I could tell just by the way he looked at me that he loved me. At the rate he processed his feelings, I knew we would both be dead before he ever said those three words. I knew that I didn’t love him back yet, but it never sucks to hear a boy you like say, “I love you.”
For Aaron, though, these three words seemed to sit outside his lexicon. I assumed he just needed a little help, and that soon enough, he would be telling me he loved me before he left for work, and at the end of phone calls, and then, soon enough, on our wedding day.
As we lay on his bed (note: I said on, not in) talking, I devised a plan that would help Aaron tell me he loved me. After a particularly sentimental conversation, I looked over at him and said, with all the fake sincerity that I could muster, “I love you, Aaron.”
Silence.
Silence.
More silence.
“I’m sorry Ashley; I just don’t know what to say. I mean, I really like you, but saying ‘I love you’ is a big deal.”
I rolled over to face the wall in an attempt to hide my embarrassment. I needed to save face, and quickly. But the repercussions of, “Oh, Aaron. That’s okay because I don’t actually love you anyways. I just figured if I said it first then you would say it, and then it would make me feel good,” were too severe to risk. I sucked it up, and went to bed.
I couldn’t have misjudged Aaron that badly. He really did love me, and I was sure of it. So, after a few weeks, and another relatively sentimental conversation, I tried my plan again, but with a little twist: “I’m really sorry I put you on the spot the other day,” I said. “I know that you weren’t ready to say it, and that’s okay. Just know that I really do love you, Aaron, and that I’ll still love you when you’re ready.”
Silence.
Again.
Embarrassed beyond words, I vowed never to mention, “I love you” ever again, but as luck would have it, I couldn’t avoid it forever.
“So, I have been thinking…” Aaron blurts out in the middle of a Prison Break re-run, two weeks later. “I know that I really like you. And I think back to the way I feel about you, and the way I felt when you said that you loved me and I didn’t say anything back, and I think about how happy I am when I see you, and how sad it makes me when you are sad. And then I think about the way I would feel if you weren’t here anymore, and, well, I love you.”
Well, that was anti-climactic.
“Thanks.”
Ashley Kilian
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