Gabrielle sat staring at the blank screen. There were so many thoughts running through her head, she just didn’t know where to even start. She’d always had a gift for words, but lately she had often felt…speechless. That was the effect Lucy had on her. When she thought about Lucy, so many feelings flooded her body that she had trouble expressing herself. How do you tell someone just how important she is to you without sounding like some kind of lunatic or scaring her off? How do you tell her that she’s on your mind day and night without sounding needy or obsessive? That was the problem facing Gabrielle right now.
She’d type, read, delete, and repeat the process over and over, trying to find the right way to say what she wanted, finding herself dissatisfied each time. She thought more about everything she felt when she came to the realization that it was her thinking that was getting in the way. In her last relationship, she had to be very careful with how she phrased any message to her partner. If she picked the wrong word, had a “tone” that could be misinterpreted, or hurried off a message because she was tired, she’d end up paying for it later. She had become a neurotic message writer. She’d inspect everything. Read it over and over looking for some imaginary flaw that she knew her partner would find if she was pissed off. But Lucy wasn’t her ex.
Closing her eyes and tuning out the demons that made her second-guess everything she said and wrote, Gabrielle began to type. As she wrote, she didn’t listen to her head, she listened to her heart.
“In a few short months, you’ve become the most important person in my life. You accept me and appreciate me for who I am, and that’s not something I’m used to. When I think about you, I can’t help but smile. And I seem to be smiling all the time now. My heart beats faster when I see a message from you. You are smart, funny, beautiful, brave, passionate, generous, loving, and kind. You are the first person I want to talk to in the morning. You are the last person I want to talk to at night. I want to share your joys and your triumphs. I want to comfort you when you’re sad. I want to walk through life with you and get as much joy and happiness out of it as we can. You are the one I’ve been looking for and you came along just when I was about to give up. You have changed my life.”
Reading through her message, Gabrielle was happy. All she had right now were words and she couldn’t afford to lose them. When the day came that she could use a look or a touch to tell Lucy how she felt, that would be the day when being speechless would be okay.