Knowing I’ll never fully know anyone is what makes it feel like such a gift when someone lets me in, even a little. When they tell me the thing they didn’t post about. When they trust me with the part that doesn’t make a good story. When they let me see the mess behind the metaphor.

I don’t really know what their lives feel like from the inside. I don’t know what they dream about when they’re quiet. What memories still hum at the edges of their minds. What private joys they carry in their pockets like lucky charms.

There’s a certain quiet violence in realizing you’ll never know most people deeply. You’ll never see the little rituals that hold them together. Never hear the thing they say out loud when they’re alone in the car. Never know how they feel about rain on Tuesdays, or whether they sleep with one leg out of the blanket, or who first taught them how to... See more