Hindsight

Whenever I was with you, our conversations were so ethereal.  Not because of the content, but because of the feelings I had.  Like it wasn’t quite reality, for a time.  Like the concrete details of my life and my presence on the planet were somehow disconnected from me.  And they always seemed to linger just outside the door; I held my breath least I ruin the scene.

Every time you spoke, it seemed as if I’d missed a step.  Like a portion of our exchange had passed by unnoticed and you were on the next subject, expecting me to follow.  I did my best to follow but felt lost in a sea of near understanding.  As if I was constantly catching myself as I stumbled forward, trying to regain my balance.

Maybe that’s why I felt the way I felt with you.  There was no reality to interfere with my fantasy.  I could believe that you meant what I wanted you to, that all those silences and thick pauses exhibited a shared connection rather than a lack of understanding.  I saw us together, on the same wavelength, riding the same tides.  In actually, we were probably not even in the same body of water.

But how could we have been?  You were on a pedestal, so far above me that I couldn’t see you as anything other than a brightly burning star.  I watched you soar above the world, separate from it and immune to the everyday annoyances that plagued us mere mortals.  And I worshipped you, loved you, obsessed over this perfect, ideal vision I’d created of you.

Of course you were never really anything more than human, composed of the same capacities and failings.  But I realized that too long after you left my life to ever really see you.  And now I can't help but wonder what you look like.