What is it that causes us to romanticize people we don't know?

As if their lives are somehow different than ours, as of they don't silently cry themselves to sleep at night.

I learned to live in silence,
long ago,
curled up in the warm spaces
between my breath.

The small footsteps
of the children upstairs,
echoing from within
as I inhaled...and exhaled...
recalling that the objects
which surrounded me,
had names.

Even so,
the name i'd been given,
it escaped me.

I had escaped.

Over time,
the wonder,
the mystery,  
the magic,
it seemed to fade.

What is left now,
is the memory
of those echos,
the footsteps of
the children upstairs,
grown and gone
and I think to myself,

was I ever even awake?