No amount of fire or freshness.

It started in preschool when my first crush would pull me around in a plastic red wagon to keep me safe from the redheaded boy who chased me. That was it. That’s what sparked my hopeless romantic, ‘save the damsel in distress!’, dramatic, mindset on love. It ruined me. I’d develop a harmless little crush on a boy who, in real life, would never like me, but in my day dreams, adored me. I would make him up to be this perfect human in my mind. This was harmless of course, until boys started to like me back. 

I remember the disappointment I felt the first time I had a ‘boyfriend.’ I was in junior high and he was a year older than me. Before he knew I existed I had dreamed him up to be perfect. He always said the right things and he protected me. But the real him didn't meet my expectations. You’d think I would have learned my lesson then, but I continued day dreaming about the boys I liked. They were all wonderfully sweet. In my mind.

This is a dangerous path to go down, day dreaming. It cripples you. Because what you see in movies or read in books probably won’t happen. Something wonderful will happen to you, yes. Someone wonderful will come into your life and make you happy for awhile. But that day dreaming heart of yours will ruin things eventually. No one can live up to the expectations of a day dream.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said it perfectly in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby had always loved Daisy but hadn't seen her in five years. Imagine the kind of person you can build in your mind in that amount of time.

“…I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

And that’s it. That’s all it takes. One wrong strum of your heart strings to remind you that this person is not as perfect as you imagined them to be. So you let them go. And you feel better for it because someone out there will surely live up to what you've dreamed. 

It’s a vicious cycle that you will find yourself in again and again. It won’t stop until you realize that dreams are not reality, but reality can be better than your dreams if you let it be. The grass is not greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it.