why is it that we idealize our past relationships? they invade the present. especially our firsts. even if they are no more or less special than current events, they still defy the fading of passing time.

i was disassembled by her. and even still, years later, i'm finding pieces in my travels that i never realized were missing.

the first time connections are made, the vitality you feel douses your being with emotional kerosene. when those connections are closed, life seems to burn down around you. this is usually the moment you can pinpoint the loss of your youthful romatic idealism. ashes blow everywhere. the flame flickers out. the cold becomes unbearable, and the only relief is the comfort of idealization. the warmth of remembrance until the smoldering pieces can replace the frost-tinged psyche.

it's always difficult to replace substance with remnants. the carbonic ashes congeal into a thick paste and solidify into a crude armor crust; a shell thickening with the dust of collapsing lives built up to be what they are not. stacked too high and crumbling and sticking and thickening. and built up higher and more precariously after the fact.

reality does not become truth just because you think it.

a betrayal becomes merely a mistake when idealized. when a sculpture of legos crumbles it's easier to put the pieces back together in the most convenient way, rather than the way that most closely resembles the original. so it goes with idealized realities becoming alternate truths. struggles to cope becoming struggles to remember, what actually happens becomes unimportant. the pieces making up the whole aren't necessarily put where they belong, they have merely become a means to an end.

and ideally, the ends should justify the means. but oftentimes, the means blurr the ends.