But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story - in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in a parallel world in their head; conjuring up endless plots and scenarios for this thing that never actually happened.
When I was younger, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I told a lot of lies in school. I told my friends once that I was playing John Travolta's daughter in a movie. I also told people that I had this romantic affair with Jonathan Taylor Thomas over a summer.
I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.)
Whats nice about my dating life is that I dont have to leave my house. All I have to do is read the paper: Im marrying Richard Gere, dating Daniel Day-Lewis, parading around with John F. Kennedy, Jr., and even Robert De Niro was in there for a day.
You can be empathetic to a character in a book in a way that you can't with a real person, which is weird, because you know everything there is to know about them.
When I was a teenager, I had trouble getting a boyfriend, so I imagined Arthur Rimbaud or Bob Dylan as my boyfriend.
It's true the people we meet shape us. But the people we don't meet shape us also, often more because we have imagined them so vividly. There are people we yearn for but never seem to meet.
