From There to Here: When Understanding Gets Lost

Geplaatst op 11-12-2025

I sometimes wonder how we got here when we were once way all the way over there. Sure the place and time were different, but now it feels like the cast of characters are also in stark contrast to the ones today.

Back then, I was the guy who liked you, and you were the girl who didn't like me back. Rather, you just liked to be liked by me. So I had to get you on my page, catch you up to where I was at in our story, and then, once you got there, once we were on the same page, all seemed cool.

Now nothing is cool between us anymore. Not even us. It's just real hot, or real cold. Real hot. Real cold.

Look back on it all. It wasn't that long ago. At most, maybe a couple of years ago. We were adults then, just as we are now, yet everything about back then feels so childlike and when I say childlike, I mean, like a child, we swear we knew it all, or at the very least, more than the adults.

The Illusion Of Understanding Each Other

We wouldn't make those same mistakes would we? We wouldn't even make the same mistakes we used to make with others. Lessons were learned, and we swore we were more than capable of passing each others tests. I knew I liked you, so, so much and at the moment you kissed me back, I knew you liked me too because people don't make kissing mistakes. At least not when they're sober, and we were both sober the first time we kissed.

So we got along. Great.

But then it all began to come undone. We found a snag, and we thought we could just snap it off with one strong, quick tug, only to see it all slowly come apart. Pretty soon, there was this big hole of misunderstanding and we fell into it. Over and over explaining what our issues were with one another, and over and again sighing in frustation because we just didn't think the other person understood.

These weren't even arguments we were having. These were two different conversations happening at once, and it was only when one of us said something along the lines of sex or making up did we actually get back on the same page.

The Physical Connection That Remains

We tried to learn so much more about each other because we thought there was more worth learning. I know I liked you when I saw you, and you looked so good I was determined to like the other stuff about you too. When I fell for it all, and you did the same, I thought this here was the moment I've been waiting for and no way was there going to be another moment like it. Communication as the base of any strong relationship is something we couldn't quite manage to sustain properly.

Then the only moment like it came. That was the moment when we realized, no matter how many times we got back on the same page, the two of us read at two different speeds, and probably comprehended our story a lot differently. Hell, maybe we never read the same book to begin with.

Still, there was the physical stuff we couldn't quite seem to shake with one another. It was the evidence we weren't done with one another and it was always everywhere. In the living room, in the kitchen, in the shower, in the bedroom. Man, we made messes of our spaces, didn't we? The scenes of the crime outlined in strewn clothes and out of place furniture. Finding common ground requires honest communication and a willingness to truly listen to each other.

And sometimes after we're done, I look at it all and I have to ask myself, how did we get from there to here? Over there used to have so much more, and over here there's nothing.