Honestly loved

A month and a half ago, someone told me he loved me and I told him that I loved him too.

There is a limit to the amount of detail I am going to give on that, but I will give some background.

We have known each other - without frequently being around each other - for five years. I was attracted to him but learned he was married so was mortified; both for not realizing it and then just for having the feelings. I worked really hard to get over that, and then when I could just like him as a person it was a relief. (He never knew any of that.)

Two fairly significant changes along the way included him getting divorced and my non-platonic feelings coming back hard. The latter had no influence on the former, but the former probably had something to do with the latter.

We happened to see each other twice within a few months, which never happens. The first time, although I did not confess love or anything like that, I did overshare and then felt really weird and stupid about that. In retrospect, I think the overshare - which was essentially admitting that my life is super hard right now - allowed him to also open up about his own problems, and that might be how we got to "I love you."

There is a lot that is up in the air there. We probably should have talked more that night, but it felt so heavy, and there was so much else going on, that there is still a lot to be said. There are a lot of obstacles, including but not limited to us both being at low points in our lives with lots of obligations and not lots of money and also about 2600 miles between us, so don't get too excited.

At the same time, I've had my fair share of euphoria with it. I can be doing many other things, mostly staying on track, but there is still a chorus of his name in my head. There is the memory of him saying "I love you." There is the concern sometimes that I said it back a little too immediately and adamantly. However, there is also the fact that as implausible as it was, when I was anticipating seeing him that night, among the many thoughts that went through my head was "You know, it's important for a lot of guys that they are first to say 'I love you', so you should let him go first." It hadn't seemed like an immediate need.

There is a lot to be figured out, and to think about, but what I want to say most at this point is really about me.

People who have been reading for a while know that I have really been trying to work on myself, and heal, and be better, and a lot of that has really started to come to fruition this year. I tend to believe that if the healing had not happened, then this could not have happened.

I don't mean to make any grand claims; I know that people with gaping holes in their self-esteem end up in relationships all the time, but I haven't. If me being open the last time that we saw each other allowed him to be open this time, I was only able to be open because of some of the things I'd worked through. And all of that progress is what allowed me to just reciprocate his love instead of possibly saying and definitely thinking "Why? Aren't you worried you can do better?"

(Which would be a terrible thing to say to someone you love who loves you, but it is a place that is mentally easy to go.)

My life started with a sense that there was something wrong with me, and at 14 it crystallized into understanding that I was fat and no one could ever love me, and especially if a boy seemed to love me it was a joke. I tried to compensate for that by being really good and helpful, but my main hope was that some day I would lose weight. None of the attempts worked, but I just wasn't good enough yet. Someday I would make it, and then I could have love and it would be okay. I loved people, but I kept my hope locked up and hidden, and repeatedly failed to lose weight.

At 31 I let my guard down and hope in, but I was wrong. The confirmation that the years of boxed up pain and fear were right made me want to die. Eventually I got to understand that was wrong, but believing it, and acting like it, was still really hard. It took me until 46. The real progress probably didn't start until 41, with depressed teen girls and the long reading list and My Chemical Romance. It's taken reading, and writing, and praying, and a year of selfies, and learning to let myself say "I hate" and be angry. All of that just to be able to say "I love".

I have had my fair share of doubts - "What if he just meant that he loved me as a friend?" And that would kind of suck, but it wouldn't break me the way the false hopes at 31 did. I am better now.

You cannot know how much it means to me that he told me he loved me in this state: broke, fat, and so utterly me. I have never been super cute, but I have been better looking than this. I have definitely been better off financially than this. The only thing to be into now is me. Somehow that is still worthy of being loved. I know it's right now too, though I still understand that not everyone gets it.

When I saw him in March, he asked me something that got me thinking, and I had some important realizations there. This time what he told me did too. Whatever happens from here, he has been good for me. I think I have been good for him. We could be friends.

And I don't want to be only friends; let's not have any lack of clarity there. But for while we are in this in between time, even if nothing else happens, I am happy that this happened. I love the euphoria, and I love the more practical realization of how much I have grown.