I have never been the kind of man who looks up. Everyone knows that about me. I walk with my head lowered, steady, contained. I do not scan rooms. I do not steal glances. I move through spaces quietly, almost as if I am trying not to disturb the air. Looking at someone repeatedly, without reason, without permission from my own rules, was never something I allowed myself to do.

Except with you.

I do not remember how many times I looked at you, whether you noticed or not. I only remember that it was many. More than I had ever looked at anyone else. There was something about you that kept pulling my eyes back, as if my body knew something my mind had not yet admitted. Every glance carried the same feeling, a quiet ache mixed with wonder. It was the kind of feeling that makes you want to understand a person completely, to hold them gently in your hands before fear arrives and ruins everything.

And fear did arrive. It whispered its usual poison. It told me I was too damaged, too complicated, too flawed to even imagine holding someone like you. It tried to convince me that you were light and I was shadow, that you were something pure and I was something unworthy. So instead of stepping closer, I stood still and watched. I watched the way someone starving watches a table they believe they are not allowed to sit at.

Eighteen year old me did not understand any of this. He was confused by his own behavior. He told himself he was just curious. Maybe she reminds me of someone, he thought. Maybe she is just different. Maybe I am just intrigued. He could not admit that what he was feeling was longing. He did not yet know what it felt like to recognize someone who could make him feel whole. He did not have the language for that kind of recognition.

Now, when I see you, I remember those glances clearly. I remember the quiet electricity in them. I remember how alive I felt and how terrified I was at the same time. And I feel tenderness for that younger version of me. He did not understand that he was not just looking at a girl. He was looking at the very thing he had been searching for without knowing it.