My mind's mischievous creations
I met Jack on Tinder. Talking to someone you've never met in real life is dangerous, and I don't just mean because they could be a serial killer (take care out there, my loves). It's dangerous because your imagination - you know, that wonderful part of your psyche that conjures unicorns and aliens and Ryan Gosling/Jennifer Lawrence in your bed - is more powerful than you think. Where there's a gap, your imagination will fill it. It will do this by whipping up elaborate fantasies which, by definition, are mind-made inventions that are either improbable or totally impossible.
And when it came to Jack, my imagination had six blissful weeks in which it was free to run wild, plugging the unknowns of his personality with Godlike characteristics. In my head, he was my dream guy: passionate but down-to-earth, sexy but modest, cool but humble, hilarious but sensitive, playful but loving. To say he wasn't any of these things would be unfair and untrue. But just like every other human on this planet, Jack had flaws. Flaws which not only meant that he was utterly wrong for me, but which I was also incapable of perceiving thanks to my mind's mischievous creations. By the time we met in real life, I was holding on to the mythical being I'd imagined like my life depended on it. When the person standing in front of me didn't match up, my vicelike grip only tightened.