The Space Between Us

I’ve been thinking recently about the space between us.

That expanse that feels so impenetrable, impassible.

We spend lifetimes trying to build bridges and boats to reach the shores of another. But even the most precise words, the most tender touch, the most earnest gaze cannot collapse the infinity that exists between my heart and yours, cannot satisfy the immensity of longing between us. The longing to know and be known by another, to feel for once that we are not entirely alone.

The truth is, you will never know me. Not really. You will never feel the way despair wrestles with hope in my heart, the way my past has etched pain and pleasure into my veins, the way my future swirls like mercury in my mind.

You will never know me. Not really. And I will never know you. That thought used to terrify me. It still does.

But maybe it’s enough, our longing. Maybe it’s enough to dream of discovering that distant shore. Maybe it’s enough to try, to throw ourselves into building bridges and boats in the hope that someday we will do what cannot be done, we will reach the destination we know we cannot reach. Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe my heart can find enough peace in knowing that somewhere out there, another is searching for it, too. Devoting itself to learning its ancient language, its strange customs and folklore. Building telescopes in hopes of glimpsing a faint signal from a lighthouse in the darkest of night skies.

Scientists have discovered that curiosity has a similar effect in the brain as falling in love. Curiosity pulls us towards something and rewards each step with dopamine, that exhilarating and intoxicating molecule.

What a gift, then, a lifetime’s worth of curiosity in the space between you and me.

So know this. I will never know you. I will never visit the continent that sprawls within you, the mountains and rivers and wild things that live between your bones. But even knowing this, knowing that I’ll never set foot on those shores, I will never stop trying. I will devote a lifetime to the impossible task of crossing that uncharted space between us.

And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll find you out there in the waves.