Guest post by @crystalll: When a girl says she loves you

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When a girl first tells you she loves you, it is not like you imagined it would be.

There are no fireflies in the air, no butterflies chirping anywhere. No avalanche of emotions. It is nothing like the poems you used to write, or the fantasies you used to have.

Instead, there is a sudden urge to unwrap her arms around you, break free, run far, far away until you’re gone, away from the world as she knows it, fade into nonexistence There are no sappy theme songs playing in the background, no hair-blowing-in-the-wind-slow-mo, no dramatic looking-into-her-eyes effect. No cinematic vignettes or intense love-in-the-air ambiance. Instead something clogs your throat and sucks up all the water in your mouth. It is twilight and there is a sudden numbness in your chest, nothing makes sense. Tracing the back-and-forth that led to this moment, it is as though your head wants to implode:

I might have other emotional attachments back home, she’d said.

Are you okay with that?

Silence....¿

Say something, she’d said, and looked away.

Mmh mmh.

What about more... you'd reply?

Silence....

Would you want us to date?? She'd ask

I don’t know. You’d sounded like a frog with a sore throat.

She’d rolled to the other side of the mattress wide enough to fit four people, wide enough to take up half the tiny room, wide enough to seem as though it’d sucked all the air in the room.

Come on, at least face me na, you’d cajoled.

I will, when you finally know.

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When a girl tells you she loves you, it is not like the things you read in a novel, in an Otosirieze Obi-Young short story. You do not have a witty reply like Jerry Chi would in his musings. Instead, you suddenly feel exposed, the four-letter word a catapult launched from her mouth onto your head. You say nothing as you fall under the weight of the words. Suddenly everything around you is spiraling into an abyss, including you. Down, down you go, while she looks on from up, up above.

When a girl tells you she loves you, it is not something you expected, looked forward to. Love is a stupid selfish thing; it comes when you are least expecting it, when you least desire it. When a girl says she loves you, the world stops revolving and all you want to do is get off. Your brain goes on overdrive: oh my god what have I gotten myself into I’m freaking out I need water cough cough what am I supposed to say my god what is happening hay god dkugd jkasgcluigdusk uibjsdkc hsniug nbakj cbiu\bs djk vgckjcdb++-*!!!!

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But you are calm on the outside, except your eyes want to pop out, except you suddenly want to leap, fly away, and run into the ground at the same time. While this is happening, you feel an overwhelming urge to pee.

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When a girl says she loves you, she is planting a rose. Take it easy. You might want to Stay the urge to blurt out all of your private insecurities: but I am a brokeass, short, unattractive, clumsy, sarcastic, insensitive, can’t even take care of myself, much less another human being, heeyyyyy, I haven’t figured my own life out, why yoke yourself with someone? It is hard to not dwell on all the things that could possible go wrong, the rose she is planting havs thorns, thorns waiting and ready to prick you. But it should comfort you to know she has already thought about these, perhaps even more than you.

When a girl says she loves you, she realizes, as you do, that love is a winding dirt road leading to nowhere exactly, but she has made up her mind to walk it with you, even though you are reluctant to take her hand.

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When a girl tells you she loves you, she is planting a rose. It has thorns and roots and if maybe in future she leaves you, these roots will rip themselves off of your heart, so you become pieces of broken soil flying a thousand directions with the wind. But her love is a blossoming rose still ─ beautiful and sweet smelling and fragrant. Don’t be scared to let her plant and nurture; because weeds might grow instead, or nothing. Roses also bear fruits, you know? Sweetly flavoured fruits.

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Have you ever tasted rosehips?