LITERARY | My most invented saint

I loved you best when you were least yourself.

That is the confession.

Before I knew the timbre of your temper, before I witnessed the small selfishnesses that make a person solid and real, I had already drafted you in gold leaf. Piece by piece, I assembled you into something untouchable.

You did not ask to be holy, I required it of you.

A flawless figure cannot contradict you. They cannot disappoint you in any way because their edges have been sanded down by your own longing. They exist precisely where you need them to exist, steadfast when you feel unsteady, gentle where you are jagged, certain where you are full of doubt.

The truth is, I was not seeing you, I was seeing my dreams.

You became the answer to questions I never voiced. You became proof that goodness could be uncomplicated, that love could be free of abrasion. I draped you in my unmet needs and called it admiration. I pressed my insecurities into your palms and praised you for carrying them so gracefully.

But what I loved most was how you reflected me back, how your imagined perfection made my devotion feel pure.

Each time your humanity surfaced, I felt betrayed. Not because you had changed, but because you had stepped down from the pedestal where I had fastened you. I mistook your breathing for a fall from grace.

It is cruel, in its quiet way, to sanctify someone.

A saint cannot be tired. A saint cannot be selfish. A saint cannot want something that conflicts with the worshiper’s dream. The more radiant I made you, the less room you had to be real. And when you failed to perform the miracle of perfection, I grieved as though you had shattered something sacred.

What shattered was my illusion.

The saint I adored was constructed from my own hunger, the longing for certainty, for safety, for a love untouched by the grit of reality. I did not love you as you were. I loved what you allowed me to imagine. I loved the version of you who never contradicted my fears, who never exposed my fragility, who never forced me to confront my own unfinishedness.

You were less a person than a sanctuary I built to hide inside.

And sanctuaries built from fantasy cannot withstand the weather of truth.

Now, when I think of you, I try to undo the halo. I try to see the unevenness of your smile, the impatience in your voice, the way you sometimes withdraw into yourself. I try to see the person who exists beyond my projection. It is harder. It is less intoxicating. It demands that I relinquish control.

But it is the only way to love without erasing.

My most invented saint was never you.
It was the story I told myself to avoid loving something imperfect.

To love you honestly, I must let you descend, not from grace, but from my imagination.