Circular Loves and Parallel Lives

Time has been the strangest thing I have known, only second to love. It is a little less crazy than love but a lot more powerful. Time proverbially is the best healer but it is also the ugliest messenger. The atrocity of time is best manifested as the comfort of memories of the past followed by prolonged realizations of the present reality. More often than not, time doesn’t knock you down directly when it’s flowing, it does so via the hands of consequences. In the moment, no matter how good or bad things are, time just exists. Actions are felt while they occur, time is felt retrospectively. Perspective is a glorified, seemingly-harmless term used for such excruciating realizations that only time can provide.

Similar to the contradictory nature of time, love is also two-faced. Complex and simple. Simple as a kiss, a hug, a tear, an embrace, a sacrifice. Complex when coupled with time and emotions that cling to love almost seamlessly. Love and time together are likely the most powerful union regardless of the nature of that love and who/what it is for. And yet, together love and time can destroy the same stability that has originated from them. It’s a circular argument with no real escape and answers. And similar to time and love, it is relative. 

Love is circular in so many ways. It has embedded joys and attachments, goals and hard-work, tears and loss. It also has the peculiar trait of bringing you back to where you started from or throwing you anywhere randomly between where you started and where you are. It does so via the hands of memories. The brain captures fragments of time and engulfs them as memories and love leverages that whenever and however the hell it wants. The rosiness of love is only at two places on this circle– the extreme outer end and the deepest core. In between, there are varying degrees of beauty and devastation. However, most of us are only comfortable with the superficial rosiness; and a handful live at that core in a trance-like state that is only attainable if you succeed in the long journey from the surface to the core. That journey is arduous and has no guarantee of reaching the destination. It strips love down to bare bones and exposes the ugliness over time. If one succeeds, it finally has the potential to guide one to a higher level of experiencing love. Most of us aren’t even aware of what’s beneath the rosy surface and, if they do, most won’t want to peel it further. 

The circularity of love is its strength and weakness. And maybe that’s why it could lead to immense joy or total destruction. Where you end in that circle at any given time point is a combination of your choices, actions, and a huge dose of luck. People like to glorify love because it has the potential to lead to contentment and joy. It can bring short-term pleasure and long-term bliss. But ignoring the weak ends, and the journey from the surface to the core, as well as its potential for destruction is like handling an open flame to cook delicious food without knowing that the same flame can and will annihilate your home without mercy. 

Time is unidirectional. As one of my favorite movies quotes, “Time can stretch and it can squeeze, but it can't run backwards”. Time moves forward and marches on, waits for nobody and nothing. In that sense, it is more powerful than love, more independent, more aloof, more destructive. But love also has its circularity that is no match for time. Time can run away and beg on its knees to go back and fail over and over again at the hands of love. While love dances around in unrecognizable bliss and pain in the same circle in which it was born. And maybe because they are so different, they are so powerful together. They complete each other. They cancel out each other’s weaknesses. 

Due to all these strange properties of two undeniable forces that have existed forever, I am the most scared of love that matures over time.

It’s the same love that has shattered me when I couldn’t attain my academic goals because I obsessively fell in love with the idea of myself at a certain professional height in my life. I fantasized glory and fame. The love that was nurtured with dedication and time ended up in an unfulfilled struggle that still defines me.

In another form, the love that matured over time made me repent and grieve friendships that sailed away or ghosted me. 

The love that imagined me as a person who I thought I would become, but was quite hypothetical. It provided me a drive to strive and saved me from drowning in grief. Yet it led to a journey that ended in self-doubt and a will to not exist.

The love that supported me through darkness but was always strained due to what preceded it. 

The love that exists in my memory and existence but left the world physically and changed my core. 

The love that froze and was reignited in futile ways to push me into a darkness that I created long ago but became a perfect catalyst to shred my sanity. 

The love that was young and scared. The one that left and danced in the circle in which it was born only to confess that it never dissipated. 

The love that started it all and gave birth to me, whose loss I have constantly feared because I don’t know the magnitude of its unconditionality. 

All these loves and more, keep moving in circles that never end, never stop. The beginnings and ends are blurred. The blurrier those boundaries, the stronger the pain. The beauty of circular love lies in its endlessness. Love without pain is like love without beauty. Once that pain integrates into beauty, it is impossible to leave the circle in which it was born. 

I am in that circle. I was likely stagnated for a long time in this particular one because I didn’t realize I was very much on the circumference. I would argue this circle yanked at me more brutally than the circles I had known to be a source of endless longing. Time sits still at its center yet it moves so fast around it. 

The recipient of such circular love, if not present in that circle, is almost always on a path that is parallel to the one belonging to the giver - who is stuck in the circle. Parallel lives and circular loves could not be more different yet they are connected by time. The people or goals on parallel paths, of course, never meet since the beginning of their separated journeys. However, they are always apparent. While I wait in the circle, the unidirectionality of time and parallelism continue to move me forward. Only if I get to the core of this circle of love, will I stop my misery. And sadly, the journey from the surface to the core is also unidirectional.

I know that the passage of time inside the circle and on the parallel routes is not comparable. I would argue, your and my circles are also not comparable assuming that you even have a circle where you are trapped and I am on a path parallel to you. The only thing that can freeze the pain of this dance and unidirectionality is acceptance of the power of aged love and let it destroy me further piece by piece, shard by shard, without letting out a sigh. And do it all over again. Acceptance, however, has never been my friend. Pretension is the next best thing my exasperated soul can offer my weary existence. Over and over and over again.