where the mind will go.

it's a funny thing to love someone from afar. because the love takes on a quality of what cannot be known or named. it cannot be defined or settled. it, by definition, lives in a sort of fault-line. cracked and heavily tread upon.

it cannot be touched or felt and it most certainly cannot be talked away.

i know there are others out there who will say, this is not love then.

but it is. if there is anything i know, it is this: it is most certainly--most assuredly love. some very particular version of it.

and i know this because it is my experience.

i don't know that love at first sight exists. i'm inclined to think, no. but i have never experienced it, so how can i say? how can i know?

loving someone from afar is a tricky thing in this age of social media where much as you might want to--much as you might try to escape the reach of information, it's not so easy. and much as you might wish for their happiness--more than anything--there is still a sadness in watching it unfold without you.

i didn't understand that before. didn't know.

i went to a tarot card reader not too far back. and i asked about a guy. and a very particular lie that was told. and she said to me, he doesn't look too often--because he sees that you're happy. and this makes him sad. and i didn't get it then.

how you can want the best for a person? how you can truly wish them nothing but happiness? and how can there be a sadness in that actualization? how can both these things be true? how is it both selfish and not? how it is so achingly human?

you see only the snippets--you see the snippets and you fill in the blanks with your worst fears and unspoken hopes and there are all those damn unanswered, unanswerable question.

they haunt, they do.

and you wonder if this is forever.

and you move on. and you meet someone else. and they do too. and it's so good.

but still.

i guess this is what it is to be human. this is the human story--or mine at least.

and i know it could all change in a moment, in a minute. in the span of ten years, too, but that's mostly too far to think about.

you survive and you hope and they do as well. and you're left wondering if you've already witnessed the end of the story, or if that's still to come.