You know that feeling, when you’re walking up a staircase in the dark and you take one more step than you need to? I call it the phantom stair. You have imagined that stair so vividly that it’s absence feels like a betrayal. Instead of landing on something solid, your foot sinks through air. For a moment you wonder if it will ever make contact with the ground again, or if it will just keep sinking forever. 

I think unrequited love, as they call it, is a lot like that moment.