This is a song about someone who thinks her inability to love is a defect when it's actually the clearest evidence that she knows exactly how much damage she's still carrying. She calls it being 'in the way' when what she really means is she's terrified of turning this patient, skating-lesson person into the next 'him' while she's still white-knuckling through trauma that's only six weeks old.
Tear-stained carpet, white-knuckled grip / I can't forget him or forgive what he did / I thought I loved you, but I can't take another hit / It's only been six weeks
She mentions 'him' once and then never again, like the wound doesn't count if she stops acknowledging it. The timeline is doing all the work here—six weeks is nothing, but she's already moved on to a new 'you' and convinced herself the problem is her capacity to love, not the fact that she's still actively bleeding.
With blood on my knees, I told you I would be okay / But you knew nothing's that easy
Blood on her knees from learning to skate becomes the most honest metaphor in the song—she keeps insisting she's fine while literally bleeding in front of someone who can see she's not. The physical wound she'll admit to, the emotional one she calls a personality flaw.
You'll wait as long as it takes
She hears 'I'll wait' as reassurance when it actually confirms her worst fear—if there's nothing wrong, what is he waiting for? The patience she finds comforting is the same thing proving she's right that she's 'in the way,' that there's an obstacle between them, that love is something she'll be capable of later but not now.
Wearing shoes that don't even fit me, hoping you'll think I look cool, I hope you do / I hope you know that I think you look fucking cool
The shoes that don't fit land harder than they should—she's performing someone ready for this while the details keep giving her away. That tripled 'hope' structure is doing the same work as the white-knuckled grip from verse one, holding on too tight to something she's convinced herself she can't have.
You leave without touching me / And you don't know just how bad it hurts / When I dreamed for weeks of you being my first
The entire song has been saturated with physical proximity—skating lessons, late nights, stolen meetings under full moons—but actual touch never happens, and when it almost could, its absence becomes the song's only explicit pain point. She's been calling her inability to love the problem, but what actually hurts is that he respected the boundary she needed him to respect.
The saddest part is she'd be shocked to learn her inability to 'love' this person might actually be her clearest act of love so far—protecting them both from becoming the next tear-stained carpet while she's still figuring out what 'him' did to her capacity for touch. She thinks she's in the way when she's actually just still healing, but she doesn't have language for the difference yet.