I’ve been thinking about love lately. Not just the emotion itself, but the quiet vacancy of a feeling once felt intimately. The echoes, the absences, the way it rewires us in ways we don’t always notice. And how, despite everything, I still find myself believing in it — because how could I not, having grown up on Bollywood rom-coms?
A recent piece I read made me put these thoughts on paper. The writer described a conversation with a friend:
My friend asks if I’m worried that I’ll still think about him even after the time that has passed since he left exceeds the time that he was in my life, and what she means is she is worried I am trapped in a memory. What she means is she is worried I won’t move on. I try to explain: there is a leash, so I can’t move on. I try to explain: the leash is fake, I am the one who tied it. I try to explain: I don’t want to move on. Please don’t make me leave this post.
Then they recount what their friend says in response:
There are only a finite amount of moments I can think back to.
It’s meant to be reassuring, I think — a reminder that the well of recollection will at some point run dry. But I don’t know if it’s true, for if absence has a shape, surely it has weight too. We are capable of creating memories out of thin air.
For as Caitlyn Siehl said in What We Buried:
Because if you walk into a room and notice what is missing from it, it’s still there, isn’t it? The first poem I wrote that wasn’t about you was still about you.
That’s what it is, isn’t it? Not so much remembering the person as carrying the weight of them. Not in some grand, operatic way, but in the quiet persistence of it. The way their absence still shapes the outline of my days. The way I pretend not to hear a song in a café, or how I order a drink and, suddenly, remember they liked it too.
It made me think about something I once read — about how bacteria, after surviving an attack, keep fragments of the virus’s DNA in them like a biological mugshot. If the same virus returns, the bacterium recognizes it instantly and cuts it apart before it can do any damage. A memory, not for nostalgia’s sake, but for survival.
And I wonder — don’t we do the same?
Not in such a clinical, scientific way. But in the way we hesitate when love appears again. Because the last time we let it in, we were cut apart. Because somewhere deep inside us, something whispers: this shape, this feeling, I have seen it before. I have been hurt here before.
But hearts aren’t as precise as bacteria. We don’t just store the hurt in neat little sequences. It lingers in places we don’t expect — in the way we brace ourselves when something feels too familiar, flinching at the very possibility of loss before we’ve even held what could be gained. Maybe that’s why moving on feels like such a Catch-22 — between keeping enough to protect ourselves and letting go enough to not be ruled by the past.
But I digress. I’ve stretched the metaphor enough.
My mother asks if I’m okay. She worries that I may be hurting alone — because isn’t that what heartbreak does? It shatters men in books and movies, turns them into ruins. It’s very Devdas, very Bukowski. The tragic male archetype who drowns in sorrow, who lets grief eat him alive until he is nothing but longing and alcohol and wasted potential.
But I think she is wrong.
Because the truth is, heartbreak doesn’t need to turn people into Devdas. There are many other Shah Rukh Khan films to choose from.
In the past, I have been Raj from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, waiting for something I once believed in to come back to me.
And at other times, I’ve felt like Aman from Kal Ho Naa Ho, loving with everything I have, even knowing it may never be mine.
But more often than not, I am Samar from Jab Tak Hai Jaan — wandering notebook in hand through picturesque locations as if journaling about my feelings against an aesthetic backdrop somehow makes them more valid … as if heartbreak hits differently when paired with misty mountains, a perfectly chiseled stubble, and a well-timed gust of wind.
And yet, at my core, I am still a romantic. How could I not be, having grown up on these stories? Love, for me, has never been a casual thing. It is a grand gesture, a sprint in the airport, a monologue in the rain. It’s singing off-key songs with arms wide open atop Brooklyn Bridge …
A friend asks me how dating is going, and my chest tightens. I say, maybe a little too quickly, that I’m focusing on other things. That my life is full, that love isn’t something I’m looking at right now. And I want to believe that. I want to believe that this part of me has hardened, that I’ve outgrown the need to be seen in that way.
But do I really believe it? Sometimes. It’s a story I keep telling myself, hoping one day I’ll internalise it.
I spend Valentine’s Day with my best friends and my heart feels full. I notice platonic relationships can fulfill you too. On my way home that night, I send this quote to the group chat:
Someone doesn’t have to be ripping your clothes off this weekend for you to enjoy a Valentine’s filled with love. Let your platonic relationships fill your heart to the brim, whether you’re in a romantic coupling or not. Revel in their magic.
Baby steps, I think.
There was a time when I hated myself for feeling. For believing the safest way forward was to never try again. That once was enough, and because it didn’t work out, I should settle for something smaller, quieter, something that wouldn’t leave scars.
I tell my friend, we need to get better at liking the people who like us. It’s just easier that way.
But that’s not enough anymore.
I am becoming someone new, shedding layer by layer, skin by skin. And yet, there is one skin I am not ready to shed. And maybe I never will. It’s this skin of a romantic.
It took me a while to realise that I am proud of this. Proud of the love and of the heartbreak. That I wear it not as shame, not as failure, but as proof that I could give, and give deeply. And just because what I gave wasn’t always met in the right way doesn’t mean I should keep it hidden.
Love, after all, isn’t meant to be buried. It isn’t meant to be rationed or caged. It is meant to be shared. In its absolute rawness. In its brutality.
Love is both a bouquet of flowers and a punch in the gut. And if I’m honest, I don’t always know where I stand with it, for some days I wonder if I’ll ever be able to love with that same reckless abandon again. I think about how easily some people seem to close doors, and I wonder if I’ll ever be one of them.
When did you know it was over? someone asks, jolting me from my thoughts.
Sometimes I think I know the answer. Other days I don’t.
When I could fall asleep knowing things were unresolved, I say, hesitatingly. When I could no longer fight.
They nod, letting the weight settle. A pause, then — Would you do it all over again?
I hesitate. Hopefully, I whisper. Then a half-laugh escapes before I can stop it, and I quote Raj from Dilwale —
Dil toh har kisi ke paas hota hai,
lekin sab Dilwale nahi hote(Everyone has a heart,
but not everyone is truly romantic)
After all, some of us love like we’re living in a never-ending Bollywood movie — illogically, unapologetically, and with arms wide open.
Loved this!
Would you do it all over again? If you’re considering it then the answer has to be yes, take the chance, no regrets 😘
This is thoughtful, beautiful, hopeful … deep, consuming, received with joy. Just like love. Gorgeous writing. Always stay romantic. The world needs much more of this. And really like the folk who like you! Yes!!