He says, “Ana, I love you,” almost in disbelief that I wouldn’t know it already.
It didn’t sound like a confession. More like a devastating fact, stated in utter defeat. Three words that were supposed to carry so much happiness now carried a tune of melancholy and hopelessness instead.
Because how did this happen? How did we get here?
And the words that followed only made it heavier.
“I love you, Ana, and I don’t know what to do.”
Ouch.
Well, what was I expecting?
I wish hearing it had simply made me happy. I wish I could have dwelled in the fact that he said it at all. And for a moment, I did. I was in seventh heaven for all of a second before I came crawling back down to face the truth of it all.
How could I not be happy to hear those words from someone I’d begun to view as larger than life?
But, of course, the ache was inevitable. The yearning. The reality of what those words mean for us. Somewhere between the happiness of hearing them and the hopelessness of what followed, even the words themselves became something I didn’t quite know what to do with.
Because, as Naina says in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, “I love you” is only the beginning. After that, those same two people have to figure out how to carry the weight of those three words.
Maybe that is where we are now. Trying to carry them.
Or perhaps still trying to figure out whether any of this is love at all. Because what even is love, right?
Sometimes I wonder whether he really does love me, or whether it’s just a buzz that catches him every now and then. A feeling that resembles love enough in the moment to call it that.
And then there is whatever it is that I feel for him.
I know it is something enormous. I know he matters to me far more than I ever intended him to. I consider him in ways that have become almost instinctive. I remember the smallest things he tells me. I think about what would make him happy, what would make things easier for him, what might make his day a little better. His happiness makes me happy. When he isn’t okay, it unsettles something in me too.
I don’t know whether that is love either.
But I do know that if I were ever to be loved, that is how I would want someone to love me.
Completely. Irrevocably.
To be considered. Remembered. Thought of when I am not there. Cared for beyond convenience. To have someone notice the weight on my shoulders and instinctively want to make it lighter. Someone for whom my sadness matters simply because it is mine.
Because I think love is deeper than saying the words. Love is consuming, or at least I have always imagined it to be. It is caring about another person enough that their pain reaches you, that knowing they are not okay unsettles you, that you find yourself wanting to carry things that were never yours simply because you don’t want them carrying everything alone.
And maybe that is where my confusion begins.
Sometimes I look at the way he cares for me and think that perhaps he does feel for me the way I feel for him. Other times, I wonder whether I feel more. Whether whatever this is has taken up more space inside me than it has inside him.
Maybe that is an impossible thing to measure. Maybe two people can feel something equally significant and experience it in completely different ways. But still, I wonder.
Perhaps I wonder because, underneath everything, I just want to be loved.
I want the kind of love that makes life feel a little lighter. Someone to hold me while the world burdens me. Someone who cares that I am hurting, not because they are responsible for fixing it, but simply because the fact that I hurt matters to them.
Maybe there is still a terribly naive part of me that wants love to drive some of the pain away. To make life softer. To give me somewhere to put everything down for a while.
All I have ever wanted is to be loved. And loved, somehow, is the one thing I have always struggled to believe I could be.
Maybe that is why the word itself means so little to me now.
Life has made me anxious and distrustful. Somewhere along the way, “love” lost its spark. It has been overused, lied about, promised carelessly and attached to things that looked nothing like love. I have heard it enough times to know that saying it does not necessarily tell you the depth of what someone feels.
And then there is him.
He makes me feel things I cannot quite find the words for. Naturally, “love” comes to mind, but even that feels strange to say. Sometimes it feels too big an admission. Other times, strangely, it feels like too small a word for whatever this is.
Because I don’t know if I love him.
And despite the fact that he tells me he does, I don’t entirely know if he loves me either.
I only know how I feel when I am with him, how instinctively I think of him when I am not, and how quietly he has come to matter to me in ways I never intended.
And sometimes I wonder if I matter to him in all those same ways too.
