It's like swimming in the Caribbean Sea when nobody has ever asked whether you can swim. If you try to keep yourself at the shore, you will never know how good the water feels against your body, and you will miss out the fun of it. But if you push yourself to swim, you might drown.

And maybe,

nobody will come to rescue you.

Apparently, dating in this era has a stage for everything. Talking. Dating. Seeing each other. Seeing each other exclusively. It's as if we've become so afraid of naming our feelings that we've invented an entire vocabulary to avoid saying the obvious.

"I don't want to lose you. Let's hand each other every possible opportunity to break our hearts, but let's not make it sound too romantic."

It has become too clinical. Careful. As if we're trying to place our feelings in a container before they become too large to hold.

But the funny thing is, none of those labels seem to matter when it's 2 a.m. and he is the only person you want to tell about your day. When something wonderful happens and your hand automatically reaches for your phone before you've even thought about it. Or when you start measuring time not by days, but by how long until you see him again.

The first time I heard the word "seeing each other exclusively," I thought it sounded less like romance and more like a limited edition software update. Nobody in history ever wrote poetry about it, yet people have spent centuries writing about what it exactly feels like. The anticipation. The comfort. The quiet panic of caring too much. The strange realization that someone else's happiness has somehow become tied to your own.

And sometimes, it isn't even the big things. Sometimes it's the way he ties his hair without thinking about it. The way he blinks and smiles when he acknowledge your demands. The way his hands grab yours as soon as he realized you're scared to cross the street. The way his voice change, just slightly, when he says your name. 

It's stupid, really, how quickly the smallest things can become familiar. How you can start noticing the things nobody else would think to notice. How a person's little gestures can quietly become your favorite things before you've even decided they are. And maybe that's when you start to be cautious. Not when someone says something beautiful. Not when they promise you forever. But when you catch yourself remembering the way their body moves.

I have started to realize that trust isn't something you can simply ask someone to give you. You can't walk into someone's life and say, "Hey don't worry I'm honest. I'm loyal. I would never lie to you" and expect that to mean anything. What the fuck does any of that prove?

I know I am loyal. Sometimes, too loyal that people think I'm just dumb. But that's something I know about myself. It's not something I can hand to another person and expect them to accept as fact. I wouldn't trust someone just because they told me they were trustworthy. So why should anyone trust me for the same reason?

Trust has to be lived.

It has to be built in all those tiny moments that don't look like trust while they're happening.

When someone tells you something embarrassing and you don't laugh. When they're confused and you don't make them feel stupid for not having an answer. When they're at their lowest and you don't suddenly become a different person because they're no longer easy to love. When they succeed and you don't secretly feel smaller beside them. When you're angry and you still remember that they're your person. When you could use something they once told you against them, but you don't.

I think I've also started to understand that trust isn't only about whether someone will sleep with someone else behind your back.

It's about safety. It's about vulnerability,

It's about wondering, if I lose my footing here, will you make me regret reaching for you?

And lately, I've found myself wondering about the other side of it. Not just, will I be able to trust him? But also, will I be someone he can trust too?

Will I be a safe space for him when he's lost or confused? Will I still support him when he's low? Will I be patient when he doesn't know what he's doing? Will I celebrate him when things finally go right? Will I still be the same person when his life gets bigger? When he becomes more successful and fame surrounds him, when more people start wanting pieces of him. Will I still be able to look at him and think, I'm fucking proud of you, without secretly wondering what his success means for my place beside him?

I don't want to love someone only when they need me. I don't want loyalty to mean staying no matter what, either. I think I want something more deliberate than that. The kind of loyalty where I can support you without losing myself. Where I can be your safe place without becoming responsible for saving you. Where I can love you through your difficult days and still expect you to meet me on mine.

And maybe that's why I'm scared.

Because I think I might be in love with you. Not that I have fallen in love with you. That sounds too certain. I don't know yet.

Maybe it's just the way I notice things now. The way I remember your hands whenever I feel like holding someone's hand. The way I see your life that you don't share to the world. The way I hear your sweet voice when others think you're rough. The way you say my name and it starts to make me smile.

Maybe it's the fact that when something happens, you're becoming one of the people I instinctively want to tell. Maybe it's that I miss you in places you aren't supposed to be missed yet. Maybe it's that I can imagine happiness with you before I've decided whether I should. 

And that scares me.

Because suddenly, you will be the person I want to tell things to. The person I want beside me when something happens. The person I miss when you're not there. And then one day you realize you've given someone a place in your heart before you've had enough time to find out whether they know how to hold it.

And I don't want to do that blindly again.

But I also don't want to become so afraid of getting hurt that I stop letting anyone get close.

I can just let the good things be good without using them as evidence for something I haven't learned yet.

Because maybe, that is what trust actually looks like in the beginning. Not certainty. Just enough consistency that, little by little, your nervous system stops asking whether you're safe. And maybe, that's how you build something real. One moment after another, until eventually you have enough of them to look back and realize you've been building something without noticing.

I don't want to become someone who never falls again just because she knows what falling feels like. I just want to fall with my eyes open this time. I want to know who I'm falling toward. I want to know who I am while I'm falling. And I want to know that when one of us falls, the other person doesn't run.

Maybe that's all trust really is.

Not a promise that I will never hurt you. Not a declaration that you can trust me. Just two people, slowly giving each other enough reasons to believe: I am still here.

And then, one day, realizing they don't have to ask anymore.

This time, maybe I will have to swim the Caribbean Sea. Maybe I will still be scared of drowning, but maybe, I will let myself get a little closer to the water.

And if I ever fall in love again, I hope it isn't because I forgot how easily people can hurt each other. I hope it's because, somewhere along the way, you gave me enough reasons to believe I could be myself beside you. Not perfectly. Not fearlessly. Just, honestly.

So tonight, come here.

Sit beside me and take this knife.

Keep it with you.

You know exactly where the blade would hurt, and can still choose to slit my throat.

It's not me believing that you could never hurt me. But knowing you could, and still choosing to place the knife in your hands. The same hands that have ever carried mine. So if I ever choose to fall in love with you, perhaps it won't be because I stopped being afraid. Perhaps, it will be because I looked at you, knowing exactly what you could do with it, and still moved a little closer.

And if I ever really do,

I don't think I would want to do it exclusively. That's way too modern.

If I ever do,

I will choose to fall in love with you,

conservatively.

September 9, 2026.