She Wants Me to Open Up But Every Time I Did, Something Got Broken.

She says I have a wall.
I say it’s a boundary.
She says it’s made of concrete.
I say, “Well, at least it’s stable.”

We laugh, but she’s not wrong.

I want to open up.
I really do.
But every time I get close, I feel like a dog that remembers the fence shock, even if the fence isn’t there anymore.

I don’t come from sharers.
I come from “walk it off” and “man up.”
I come from dads who showed love by changing your oil and occasionally asking how school was, without looking up from the remote.

When I did open up as a kid, said I was scared, or confused, or sad, something always cracked.

Sometimes it was a voice.
Sometimes a door.
Sometimes the whole mood of the room, turned cold enough to make me wish I’d just kept quiet and played Xbox.

So I learned to armor up.
Got really good at changing the subject.
Became fluent in sarcasm and deflection.
Mastered the art of saying, “It’s not a big deal,” while bleeding emotionally from three places I can’t pronounce.

Now I’m grown.
And I’m with someone who actually wants to know me, like, the real me.
Not just the one who does the dishes and makes fire Spotify playlists.
The one underneath the performance.

She says, “Talk to me.”
I say, “I’m trying.”
She says, “I’m here.”
And that’s somehow scarier than yelling.
Because I don’t know what happens next if she hears all of it… and leaves.

But the kicker?
She won’t.
She hasn’t.

And slowly, like a guy trying to unlearn a reflex, I’m learning that not everyone breaks what they find.

Sometimes they hold it.
And wait.
And help you build the version of yourself you were never allowed to be.