There was something about her. We were connecting. She smiled, I smiled. It was there, and it sparked.

We enjoyed each other’s company, but we weren’t together. There was a barrier and it was slippery and intangible and it separated our souls.

She shared things, but not herself. She withdrew herself from intimacy. There was penetration and kisses and orgasms. But they felt like acts, things we did to each other, eliciting chemical reactions…while a huge emptiness sat beneath it.

Even when she was looking into my eyes, she wasn’t with me. She was off a short distance away, observing.

Or simply buried too deep in her head. Walled off, vulnerabilities hidden. But I’d seen them on occasion, when she’d lash out at something trivial I did, transferring whatever internal problem onto her environment.

I had showed up with my vulnerabilities, caring too much, getting too close, so maybe she chained her own demons away for my own protection, because she knew how powerful they were.

My initial frustrations faded, replaced by sympathy, and now pity. Because how can there be empathy when I can’t relate to that fear, of someone too anxious to let go, and let the future be?

Things don’t come naturally without our allowing it.