You were everything and nothing all at once.
I fell in love with the vision of you I created,
Not the real you.
I fell in love with the what if
With the idea of you—an idealized version that never truly existed.
So in truth, it wasn't you that I missed.
You were hot and cold, up and down,
A whirlwind I could never follow.
Anxiety gripped me whenever I thought of you,
Yet I was so in love with the image I held in my mind.
So maybe it wasn't real when I said, I love you
Because those words were meant for a version of you that doesn't exist.
I spoke them to the you I knew well,
But they weren't meant for that you.
But perhaps it was never love at all,
Only a mirror reflecting my own desires,
A canvas where I painted you in colors of my choosing,
Hoping you'd come to life in the shades I imagined.
I built you in my dreams, brick by fragile brick,
Until the illusion was so real,
I could almost touch it.
But illusions are like smoke,
They slip through your fingers when you reach out,
And I was left grasping at the air,
Wondering why it never felt like enough.
You were the perfect puzzle piece I tried to force into place,
Ignoring the edges that didn't quite fit,
Believing that with time,
You'd mold into the shape I needed.
But people are not puzzles,
And love is not about fitting into the spaces we carve out for others.
It's about seeing the jagged edges,
The rough corners,
And choosing to love the whole,
Even when it's not what we envisioned.
I realize now,
I wasn't searching for you—
I was searching for someone to fill the emptiness inside me,
To quiet the doubts,
To soothe the loneliness.
And you, you were just close enough to the fantasy
I'd created in my head,
That I let myself believe you were it.
But the truth is,
I was in love with a dream,
A fleeting shadow of what could have been,
Not with you,
Not with the man who stood before me.
Now, as the haze clears,
I see the reality—
The imperfections, the flaws, the truth.
And I know that what I felt wasn't love,
Not the kind that endures.
It was a desperate longing,
A need to believe in something beautiful,
Even if it wasn't real.
And though the realization stings,
There's a strange comfort in the clarity,
In knowing that the love I sought
Was never truly there.
It was a reflection,
A ghost,
A fleeting glimpse of something
That only existed in my mind.
