I Love...Thee?

So...after only seeing my girlfriend for about a month or so and she's uttered those three words to me. My first thought? "Oh crap."

She's not on MySpace anymore so I'm safe to write this however, it *is* important for me to note this down...I use MySpace primarily to write as a journal, and making people laugh or read the blogs is a secondary act.

So after my escapade weekend with her I call her to see what was up with the rally she was at (she participated in the Immigration Reform Rally on Monday). She informs me that the meat she gave me wasn't good and wanted to come over and switch out that meat for the one that was cooking longer (The lamb meat I had wasn't boiled to a certain amount of time).

"It's okay! I don't mind. I can just boil it longer myself" I tell her. "Nooo, I don't feel right letting you eat that meat." And so she comes over and drops off some better meat. I keep the older meat anyway.

So Tuesday she comes over also. She misses me and comes over during the evening. We talk and chat a lot about stuff like we always do, about topics such as:

1. The guy that keeps calling her every day....every 5 minutes or something.
2. How the guy is telling her to break up with me and hook up with him,
3. What her daughter thinks of me,
4. Spanish,
5. Why I'm always talking to Jose,
6. Her trying to find out how many girlfriends I have had,
7. What kind of plans we have for this weekend lined up, and
7. Reading a letter from my friend Anna Caroline in Brazil.

So I was asking her when she was leaving, out of curiousity really, a couple of times. She took it as a hint for her to leave and needless to say much she was upset and left...I thought she was kidding around all the way up until her car left my driveway....that's when I realized...SHE'S MAD. Oops.

Anyway she calls later and we talk and she realizes that I wasn't asking her to leave and apologizes for leaving like that. We talk more, things too personal to discuss here, but nevertheless we hang up.

I get a text page from her not too long later and my stomach almost turns:

"I love you bebe."

Oh crap. How do I respond? I don't love her yet but I can't just leave her hanging. So I respond with:

":) You're so great!"

Okay so it wasn't that great a response well it's better than saying I love you when I don't mean it, and it's better than not responding.

Now I'm stuck in a rut....SOOO STUCK. So many things are running through my head:

- Do I really want to have a relationship with this person?
- Am I really okay that she has kids not my own?
- Is single life better than being in a relationship?
- Am I going to marry this person?
- Am I going to hurt her emotionally? How is that going to turn out?
- Maybe I shouldn't have spent this much time with her.
- I don't want to her hurt her.
- Should I go back to single life, and take my chances on finding someone else?
- Why did she have to have kids...
- What are my parents going to think about all this?!?

I'm very confused at how I should feel at the moment, now that things have shifted to second or third gear in this relationship. Oh crap oh crap oh crap...what if I never love this person? I'd like to play this relationship by ear...but love? Ohhhhhh man.