I found myself slowly fading into the imagination of who I thought she was, what i liked her to be. Every post, every note, gently pulled me back to reality. In that space between fantasy and truth, I realized that lust is often just curiosity wearing a different mask.
And soon as the curiosity fades, so does the illusion, leaving behind the quiet question: “What was I thinking?”
She showed me something I hadn’t seen before, not about her, but about myself. That my imagination will always paint a version far more perfect than reality can sustain. And that’s not her fault. It’s the fault of the pedestal we build in our minds, brick by brick, image by image, the naive mind of men.
I came to understand this: beautiful women, like all people, are full of depth, complexity, and contradiction. But when we only see the surface, we fill in the rest with fantasy. We project onto them who we HOPE they are. And when reality arrives, it doesn’t match the scene we wrote. She didn’t ask to be the sculpture I carved in silence. Men paint a woman in impossible colors.
I woke up to the truth that it’s not women who fall short, it’s the unrealistic ideal that we, as men, often invent. It says more about our own yearning than about who they really are. Men unconsciously assign our own desires, hopes, or even fears onto another person. This makes me wonder, can we truly have love at first sight? I feel like a therapist would say something like “You’re not in love with the person; you’re in love with who you imagined them to be.”
Love and lust have always lived in denial of each other, like two voices speaking different languages, pretending they don’t hear the other.
A few weeks ago, I watched a video that explored this from a spiritual lens, through the chakras. This “expert” said that being stuck in lust isn't just about desire; it might be a signal from the soul. A cry, even. That beneath the surface, even in the arms of someone, the soul could still be searching for its true counterpart.
That hit me harder than I expected.
Because when I look at lust, not as hunger, but as curiosity fueled by imagination…I start to wonder: “What is my soul really trying to say to me?”
Is my imagination creating a picture of the person my soul is missing?
And if that's true… then what happens when the picture is more vivid than reality ever could be? Sculpting an impossible statue.
Does that mean I'll never truly find my soulmate, only fragments of her, scattered across strangers? And can you not love someone deeply and create a family together, but your soul starves of something more?
Part of me knows where this all began.
Maybe it’s the part of me still aching for the woman who was supposed to be a boy’s first love.
The one who left too early.
But that’s a story for another time... or another lifetime.
So, for now, I’ll just say…
Thank you, girl on Substack.
Your words/pictures reminded me of something I didn’t know I was still grieving.
Or maybe... still hoping for.