Those walls
Not long after that trip, we met up another weekend. He knew that night in Boston that I didn’t respond well to his declaration of love for me. I had explained it simply as I just needed to go slowly.
We stood outside his apartment one evening. He looked at me with such kindness and said, “I want to help you take down your walls.”
In my mind, the answer was instantaneous. Oh hell no, I thought. I just got my life under control.
The struggle as I stood there? Before me stood the kindest …truest heart… and one that I knew had been hurt by others. I did NOT want to hurt him…I could walk away from others, but …he was different. Yet I couldn’t risk upsetting the stability that I had just obtained.
“Couldn’t we just keep it fun and light, no serious ties?”
We met again for dinner at that “family-style restaurant” where I again tried to explain why I didn’t want to get serious. He listened. He was very quiet.
That January, not long after that night, we met on a weekend morning in Torrington. At a diner…which was just across the street from the Burger King parking lot, the parking lot he met up with me the first time he came to Torrington.
Looking at me with what seemed a mixture of sadness yet acceptance, he told me he was setting me free. He could see that I didn’t want to get serious, and he understood. Then he wished me well and took his leave.
I sat there thinking…But…but…
Looking back on that time from now, I feel such pain in my heart. True pain. For the hurt he felt. For the place I was still in, full of fear, yet not wanting to be apart.
Soul Mosaic 
Leave a comment