‘that place, it’s just a thing you created. just something you try to remind yourself of’ he was trying to get at something deeper, to tell a truth, but to tell it softly. ‘see, whenever you lose something, the intensity distorts the rear view. you look back and you never really see what was there, you see what you wish you saw. I’m not trying to say this will make it easier, heck it might even make it worse, but you can’t keep going on imagining that everything was perfect. you’re tricking yourself into believing that nothing else will ever be as good, putting something you lost on a pedestal. but it wasn’t ever that good, you’re comparing now to something that never happened. you have this incredible thing right in front of you and your imagination is dictating how you’re gonna move forward’ the old man smiled then and wiped his eyes ‘kid, there’s gonna to come a time in your life where this’ll happen to all your memories, when you’ll be old and your legs won’t move like they used to. around then the old stories will start to get embellished, after a while you might convince even yourself, but regardless of the bullshit you’ll grow a little more sad. think about that now, because you aren’t old yet, you just gotta figure out how to let yourself be happy again’ he kind of shrugged as he turned back to the table he had been working at, not leaving a window for his nephew to reply.