Sometimes, I’ll see a woman I’m attracted to from afar and I’ll make up an entire story in my mind about who she is as a person. She studied art history at Yale and did Teach for America! She is exceedingly compassionate yet bitingly sarcastic! The maximum volume on her voice is awkwardly quiet like mine!
In reality, she might be the worst, the opposite of my type. She might be mainstream, dense, and shallow. Self-congratulatory, superstitious, temperamental.
But so long as I never introduce myself, the dream of who she is—of who we could be together—can stay decidedly alive.