Words fall short

“I know he’s drawn to me”, I cried through my tears as I sat on the carpeted floor in my living room with Yali’s thin arms around me. 

She held me, lovingly, crouching beside me, as the sobs shook me. 

It was such a relief to cry, to cry in the arms of a friend who feels like a sister, letting all inhibitions down, allowing my feelings to actually come through as my head, forever in charge and looking out for me, let down its guard for a few moments. 

I’m always trying to explain things, to put them into words, into categories in my head, to protect my heart. Hardly ever allowing myself to just feel. 

But sometimes, words fall short. Sometimes, there simply are no words, no categories, no explanations. 

I don’t have adequate words for what I feel for my buddy Bert. 

This is not a crush. I am not “attracted to” Bert nor am I “enamored of” him nor do I see him as “perfect” (on the contrary!). I am not “in love with” him. To say that I “like” him is correct but insufficient, limited, it doesn’t explain the depth and breadth and complexity of my feelings for him. But to say that I “love” him feels inadequate, too, almost like “too much” or “too soon”. 

I want to be with Bert. That’s the closest I can come to trying and putting my feelings into words. I am drawn to him, I want to spend time with him, I want to get to know him better, I want to get close. In what way exactly, I don’t know. And why exactly, I don’t know, either. Except for saying that I really like the way I feel when I’m with him. I like how the energy, the dynamics, the vibe between us feels when we’re spending time together. More than the energy or dynamics or vibe with anyone else, at the moment, and anyone else that I’ve interacted with for a long time. 

But here I am again, trying to put my feelings into words, trying to explain to myself — and to the world, to my friends who maybe cannot understand the depth of my pain as they try to put it into their normative, allosexual, alloromantic view of relationships — how I feel about Bert. 

When I came home from having spent a few hours with Bert last Sunday — a hike and then dinner in downtown together — my head was almost completely offline, my feelings, my body, and my heart having mostly taken over. And what my gut felt was that my feelings for Bert are mutual, that he’s drawn to me as I am to him. But my head was telling me that it’s impossible because, as far as I know, he’s straight and I now “look like a man”. If I had still “looked like a woman”, I would have had no doubt about Bert’s interest towards me, but my head is telling me that’s impossible now.

My head keeps having these internal battles, on the one hand, telling me it’s “impossible” because Bert is straight, and on the other, reminding me of what happened with my buddy Jack who was also supposed to be straight until he admitted his attraction to me as a man. So, my head can keep going on forever trying to explain the situations, to categorize the emotions, to sift through the dynamics. But what do I feel? And not only by myself, but also when I am with him. 

Without trying to understand it or categorize it or explain it: how does it feel when Bert & I are spending time together?