mail-order reality comes crashing down

i think my worst fault is all the idealizing i do.
people
places
times.
especially people. i take the outline of an individual and color in the rest from some place in my mind. i take a persons existence in the real world and rework it in my head until they are a character in the ongoing fiction that exists really only in my mind. they become an idea.
an idea only.
so that im not sure i ever really know anyone at all.
i know the made-up person, but not the one outside of myself.
maybe i do this because i want to know them. i want to know them intimately enough to imagine their thoughts and feelings in my own head. but then the real person and i never get along quite like we did when they were merely imagined.
maybe i do it because i do not want to know them at all. i want to know them only as an extension of myself.
the truth is rarely ever what you would think it would be or like it to be.
im not sure what to make of such a habit. it seems to spring from some sort of preoccupation with illusion and self. which makes me a little more hesitant to diverge the information.
but then whats the point in hiding, as so many of us do, our failures. they are more real than many of our supposed virtues im sure.
anyway, i wonder if any of us really live in a world that is not in some way colored by our own imaginations. maybe we cant agree because we dont see the same things at all.
somehow i hope this isnt the case. its an awfully lonely case if it is true.