The beauty in loving someone from a distance
Season 2's tenth newsletter drops you in the middle of a dense forest grown from the seeds of all your choices, urging you to find your own way out to freedom and sunlight
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective.
When I read this week’s essay for the first time, I realized that in some ways, my life over the past two years took the opposite path to the author’s and yet somehow we ended up in somewhat the same place.
In January 2020 I met someone and was separated from him almost immediately (thank you covid) before anything concrete could fully develop. It is perhaps because of that separation and that time that I had being alone in those long days that I was able to give my feelings time to germinate, sprout, and then blossom. I wasn’t meeting any new people in that time so instead I was able to use that time to examine aspects of our interactions for the parts that I liked and parts I could see myself fitting into my own life that I perhaps wouldn’t have been able to do had life gone on at its former busy pace.
That story, so far, still lies open ended. I don’t know what the future holds for it. I can only hope. What I do know though, is that it was the catalyst to my knowing myself better, being able to articulate what I’m looking for because I saw it reflected in another person, and most importantly, considering myself and my wants important enough to not settle for less than that feeling and the hope of that level of life intersection. I began finding more joy in my own company and in chasing my passions instead of waiting for anyone, just anyone to fill that space next to me. I needed to find that fullness within me to define myself as my own person that only needed enrichment, not completeness. I found that very sentiment and intention echoed in this week’s piece by writer Phorum Pandya which I am so excited for you to read, not just because its fresh and beautiful and soul stirring - which it is, but also because she is someone I’ve looked up to for a lot of my life and I’m thrilled to have her pen something for me here. Here goes:
The beauty in loving someone from a distance
Let this love story end now, please.
Let this love story drift into a deep slumber.
The love will live in dreams and thought bubbles;
fiction writing and creative processes;
silent whispers and occasional tears.
Let this love story end now, I beg you.
Just so it can begin to exist.
-P
Disclaimer, dear reader: I don’t drive a car.
I make up for it by driving myself up the wall as an over-thinker, speed driving to conclusions and driving my loved ones crazy every once in a while.
Rest assured, I do know how to drive a point home.
And, I hate physics. I have hated it all my life.
However, year after year, as I grow older (and wiser), I have developed an affinity for the ‘geek gods’ who gave us the formulas. In today’s essay, I am leaning on Galileo.
Distance, he claimed, is equal to speed into time.
It explains to me the way to measure the space between two things using speed and time.
It also helps me jump to a few love conclusions:
-When you try to cover a distance quickly, you ram into disaster.
-When you care more for the journey and less for the destination, you lose steam.
-When you drive the same distance over and over again, well sometimes, you get lost.
But, it doesn’t tell me what to do with all the past trips that were covered after I have changed my destination.
So, I am going to attempt to make sense of it on my own. My name will not go into textbooks, but it might help one heart feel better; even if it ends up being a solid validation for myself alone.
We never speak about changing the direction because then, we must speak about abandoning the current destination. In a world of GPS, where we change our minds (and directions) so often, it is of utmost importance to find out what to do with all the love, after a relationship has ended.
I recently changed direction from a steady relationship, and headed out without any destination in sight. Why?
My heart longed for a walk into the unknown. This decision was no walk in the park. It meant saying good-bye to a 20-year-old relationship that I still hold very close to my heart. It meant I had to abandon a route I called home.
-the go to person who read my mind from across a room
-sharing an inside joke at family gatherings
-having code words for anything and everything
-making a bad day end on a good note just by bitching my guts out without being judged
-but mostly, just knowing there was someone looking out for me even before I knew I needed saving; someone who preempted by goof-ups and was prepared with a safety net.
We all fall in love, and we want that love to be ours forever. But sometimes you realize that it's lived its time and there is a beauty in respecting it for the truth and letting it go. Learning to love from a distance is not a coping mechanism but a freedom that comes from listening to yourself and knowing when to step away. Like the seasons of the year, one cannot expect a blossom in the fall. Though one can appreciate the shedding of the old, and pave way for the new.
I had to learn to love from a distance I had created. What I found in those kilometres between us was a brand new highway that surpassed every road we had ever taken and converged at a point we both could reach without feeling the stretch.
We learnt to speak in a new language, which was rooted in love but grounded in so much care and appreciation for the people we had become that our pain grew branches of hope.
For the past two years, the two of us have started conversing in a new language – which in a way feels age-old. It is easy to be friends, because that is what we are truly designed to be.
-When I lost a big project, he was the first one I called. He didn’t tell me it was okay, he said, shit happens.
-When he decided to follow his most cherished dream, I played the sounding board, sometimes being the mirror.
-When our parents didn’t get what we were, we laughed it out on video call
-When we take baby steps in the world of dating, we remind each other to hold our heads high, and not settle for less.
Have we healed?
Not yet.
But is it so bad?
Sometimes, it is.
Other times, the experiments of resurrecting a comatose relationship is like an archeologist finding a new tomb to explore. ‘What can we save here?’ ‘What is of value?’ ‘What has survived the test of time?’ ‘What parts have long rotted?’
Distance, Shakespeare said, makes the heart grow fonder. I’d say, distance allows the heart to accept shortcomings, big changes and drastic life events.
When we break away mindfully, we break through. We reach our own individual self that has been waiting to live fully.
Loving someone from a distance is what happens when you give up the fear of losing love. Because, we can never run out of the core element that we are all made of.
Having transformed this love, the new road into the unknown is exciting: It is a breath of fresh air after a night of pour.
The struggle is behind me, the state of being in two minds has eased and the promise of a new beginning has set in.
In 2020, I moved into a new house, and began life for one. I remember one morning when I woke up with a smile. The smile was of a heart that had overcome its own test.
The first cup of freshly brewed coffee was special. I stood on the tiny balcony, facing a brick wall, but it was the finest view. Because, it was the boundary I had put up so as to begin to heal from the past.
Freedom comes at a price, and that is never revealed before the deal. The universe loves to keep secrets. And loves to reveal them in its own special way.
To sum it up, I found love again, this time inside out
While we are busy sifting our way through life, a part of us is fermenting to become the person we are meant to.
When all lovers have left, love – the faceless, touchless, silent one, peeps out of nowhere. The one that is inside us, and never leaves.
When the world (inside) suddenly makes sense and all that goes on outside is rendered useless.
Love walks in when all else walks out, when all else is lost.
Love comes to you when you have no ammo to reason, to resist, to revolt to restart. Love sits next to you, holds your hand and looks you in the eye. Love opens up, and tells you of all the times you ditched it, left it out in the cold.
The love you abandoned puts its head on your shoulder and asks you why you rejected it; while it waited, all this while, for your one glimpse; silly that you only chased the idea of it.
And then, you appreciate all the past loves that brought you back home, to that one love that never left.
-Phorum Pandya
Abandoned on the interwebs
Abandoned on the interwebs is a new section on this newsletter where I recommend some riveting, spine tingling, evocative articles, books, essays that I’ve stumbled across when I’m left to my own devices on the internet.
Serena Williams says farewell to tennis - I’ve never been sporty or even the kind of person who enjoys watching sports but reading this devastatingly written essay saying she’s leaving tennis while emphasizing just how much she doesn’t want to leave tennis and how much it breaks her heart to be doing so made me feel some of her pain too. As much as she hates that she has to leave this part of her life behind, she knows why she’s doing it, and that reason is as or more important to her life.
The Hyphen - They say the only constant is change and as grating as that can be to hear, it often holds true for relationships more than anything else. As I go through various phases in life, my relationships with people I’ve held dear change too - and sometimes not in a pleasant way. This piece tells me that though its uncomfortable and doesn’t feel okay, its not just me going through this and maybe that makes it a little better.
Before I leave you to dream
With the aim to continue growing this newsletter, I’ve set up a page where you can contribute monetarily: Ko-fi.com/theabandoneddreamscollective
This will support the newsletter grow through increasing reach, growing its pipeline of contributors, optimize submission management and eventually pay contributors.
I hope you consider contributing to this mission.
That’s all for this week
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective
Safe to say this is one of my fav pieces ever written T_T