We are always waiting for someone—believing that their arrival will erase all our pain,
imagining that their radiance upon the darkness of our worlds will dispel our bewilderment and confusion, and bathe us in peace.

We deceive ourselves most profoundly when, in moments of anguish, we whisper that one day—beside a certain someone—we will finally feel whole.

Yet, we forget that our brokenness is internal, and our incompleteness is hardwired into us like an operating system.
We forget that the very person we viewed as a savior and a path to liberation might well be the one to deliver our greatest disappointment—gathering all our scattered voids into a single, far greater chasm.

Instead of flourishing in their presence, we might wither, withdraw, fade away, and dissolve.

We forget the need to cultivate a healthy relationship with ourselves and heal our inner wounds before anticipating the arrival of another.

Another person will never be our paradise so long as we seek only to numb our pain through them; in truth, such a relationship is merely an unconscious distraction from confronting the self and facing the reality of who we are.

Dysfunctional relationships begin here—when the relationship becomes nothing more than an act of escape and flight.

Those most prone to making poor choices are the ones who wait with such eager longing that faces blur together; they project their own emotional emptiness onto a passing stranger, seeing them as something other than who they truly are.

They are the ones who think they can quench their thirst by chasing a mirage...
"(Until, when he came to it, he found it to be nothing)!"