She Wants Me to Open Up. But Every Time I Did That Growing Up, 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.