Because I love you

I was having imaginary dokusan with a teacher. I'm sure this is very bad practice, because it's delusional, and that's never a good thing, but in this case, it ended up being instructive.
In my imaginary dokusan, the teacher asked me what had brought me to practice. I didn't have an answer, and so I looked away to think about it.
"Answer me quickly," the teacher said.
Inside my head I heard, "Because I love you."

There was no way I was going to say that to the teacher.
Plus, I didn't come to practice because I loved that teacher. I don't love that teacher. I barely know that teacher.

But in my imaginary dokusan, the teacher was still looking at me and they had said "Answer me quickly" and I so I felt like I had to say something.
I looked at the teacher and said, "So, I get why you're saying 'answer me quickly' because it gets me to answer with my gut, with the essence of the answer but in this case, it isn't working. The words in my head are 'Because I love you,' and that's just not why I came to practice, it just isn't, so..."

The teacher was quiet. They didn't even raise an eyebrow or anything and they weren't looking at me or waiting or anything, they were just quiet, just there. And so I thought some more about my answer. I thought about what my therapist always tells me, that it's never about the person you're talking about, it's always about you.
"Oh," I thought. "It's because I love you. I love you. Like, I love myself."
But this didn't make sense either, at first. I'm not so good at loving myself. It's not so easy for me and I often feel wrong in doing it, guilty or selfish or undeserving.
But then I thought about why I started coming to the zen center two years ago. I came because I cared about myself. I came because my friend told me to go to church and I didn't want to go to church but I came because I cared enough about myself to try to help myself. I was lonely and I didn't have a community but I cared enough about myself to try to change that. I was actually taking care of myself when I brought myself to the zen center.

So it actually was the answer to the question. I came to the zen center because I love you. I have to admit that I still don't know who the I is in this statement, and I don't really know who the you is either, but someone cares about someone, enough to keep coming.