Find Me

by André Aciman

“It’s just that the magic of someone new never lasts long enough. We only want those we can’t have. It’s those we lost or who never knew we existed who leave their mark. The others barely echo.”

Some of us never jumped to the next level. We lost track of where we were headed and as a result stayed where we started.”

We barely talked and when we did, it seemed we seldom spoke the same language. We were exceptionally cordial and kind, but even when we were in the same room we felt so alone together. We’d sit at the same dining table, but weren’t eating together, slept in the same bed but not together, watched the same programs, traveled to the same cities, shared the same yoga instructor, laughed at the same jokes but never together, and sat side by side at crowded movie theaters, but never rubbed elbows.

We were alone together—until

“I tend to talk to everyone these days, I start conversations with the mailman just to gab a bit, but never tell my boyfriend how I feel, what I read, what I want, what I hate.

And I want you to know it soon, because I’ll be forced to hide it, even from you, if I don’t let it out now. After this secret, I have nothing to hide.

“Of course I have a secret. We all do,” I said. “Each of us is like a moon that shows only a few facets to earth, but never its full sphere. Most of us never meet those who’ll understand our full rounded self. I show people only that sliver of me I think they’ll grasp. I show others other slices. But there’s always a facet of darkness I keep to myself.”

the more we know someone, the more we shut the doors between us—not the other way around.

“Maybe what you need is less pride and more courage. Pride is the nickname we give fear.

by the time we learn to live, it’s already too late.