Connection

Is it possible to miss something you've never had?
Have you ever seen someone for the first time and felt an instant connection to them? One small moment of eye contact and suddenly it feels like so much more than that, they can see into your soul. You may only exchange a few words or you may not speak at all, they are all but a stranger.
And yet they aren't.
From that moment on, something in you changes. They are the first person you notice in a crowd, the one your eyes follow, instinctively searching them out. And yet how is that even possible? How is it possible to feel something for somebody you don't even know? Is it simply a superficial infatuation, 'love-at-first-sight', or is it more than that? Perhaps it is the distance that makes them so attractive, not knowing them allows you to create them.
You feel as though you fit, like a two piece puzzle, if only you could make the connection. If only it were that simple/easy. God, how you want nothing more than to know them. To discover their favourite season and how they drink coffee, to learn their deepest desires and irritating irks. Each scrap of information you uncover is another piece of a jigsaw slotting into place.
They fit you.
You long for the day that you hear them say it, that they felt it too. You constantly yearn for the reassurance that there is something there, that each little sign, each unlikely coincidence has been adding up to something. There has to be a reason.
Of course it is never easy. Perhaps they do feel it but you are both stuck in limbo, doomed to spend an eternity of waiting- waiting for the other to make the first move. Suffering the same fate alone. You spend so much time dreaming of the possibilities while you never let yourself contemplate it becoming reality.
There are moments you are sure they know, how could they not? How can they sit there unaware and oblivious whilst you dream of running your fingers through their hair? Each miniscule movement is magnified and intensified. You can tell you're in deep when you begin to overanalyse everything, eye contact lasts a millennium and a casual comment takes on a whole new depth. And then there is the jealousy. Jealousy is the worst, you envy those close to them, their ability to laugh and joke and know them. It physically hurts, like a knife jutting out of your ribcage, yanked each time they smile at someone else.
Perhaps you will become more familiar with them, but then there is always the danger that they turn out to be even more important than you first imagined. Because there is the constant risk of that dreaded disinterest, they may see you as nothing more than an acquaintance.
One-sided. Knowing that they acknowledge your existence but still don't want you. Knowing that you are alone, drawn to this mysterious flame that only you can feel. That hurts so much more than being overlooked. Sometimes not-existing is less painful, you can live in the world of possibilities instead of the world of disappointment.