I have a hard time expressing my feelings out loud, and I don’t know why.
Not too long ago, this person I consider a good friend said to me “Well I don’t know how you feel about me unless you tell me.” They were trying to prompt me to take a leap of faith and just put my feelings out there, but I decided to remain silent. I didn’t stay silent because I simply have no feelings towards the person, that’s actually far from the truth. I feel a lot towards that particular person, but in that moment I just couldn’t verbalize it. And what really sucks is, as I reflect, I can see that me not saying anything did a lot of damage to our relationship. My silence resulted in that person retaliating against me by pursuing someone else in front of me.
Originally, I was super pissed. I actually still am very upset. All I kept thinking was that they just reaffirmed why I couldn’t expose my feelings. Because look at what they turned around and did, they intentionally hurt me and it seemed like they were super comfortable doing so. All their retaliation did was just reaffirm to me that our relationship was not at a point where I could trust them completely, and that I was right to protect myself by not sharing my feelings for them. And although I still share the same sentiments, I can now understand that they did what they did because my silence could’ve been seen as rejection. Rejection hurts, and lot of people’s initial reaction to rejection is anger. However, I really wish they would’ve considered that I just wasn’t ready to profess my feelings out loud.
There were a few reasons I couldn’t tell them how I felt. The first being, I don’t like being put on the spot. Being put on the spot makes me extremely nervous, and it causes me to isolate myself. I simply shut down. The second reason was that becoming vulnerable to someone is not something I like to do. I see vulnerability as an implication of weakness. When you open yourself up to another person you leave room for them to hurt you. The worst feeling in the world is when you put yourself out there for someone to accept you, and they take you for granted. I’ve been through too much to share myself and my story with just anyone. The last reason is that it all seemed to be happening too fast. It always takes me a while to warm up to people. Trusting someone is not an easy task, it requires a lot of give and take. And what I’ve often found is that people are usually good at taking but when it comes to giving, there is always a challenge. However, if you really care about someone, you give them time to figure out how to navigate this process, and that for me is when I start becoming able to trust someone. I honestly just didn’t feel like we were at a point where either of us had figured out what it means to give and take with one another.
As a person who has a hard time expressing their feelings out loud I can say that just because someone doesn’t actually tell you out loud that they care and that you mean a lot to them, it doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you. I’ve never been one to wear my emotions on my sleeves. You can see everything that I’m feeling in my actions. You can see it in the way I support you, the way I confide in you, the way I listen to you, and the way I look at you. My inability to communicate my feelings out loud just might be one of my biggest flaws, but I have a tremendous heart. I’m more than capable of showing you I care, just in my actions, and I think that should be accepted. I learned a long time ago that you have to understand that no one is perfect. You’re always going to have to take the good with the bad. Hopefully, at some point in my life someone will be willing to work through this with me and accept me as I am. Until then, I’ll be working on bettering myself, and learning how to be more open to people. I’ll be my biggest supporter.
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