Love Lets You Stop Time
By: Greyson Ferguson
Tags: Death, Life, Time, Relationships, Love

Love Lets You Stop Time

Photo by Tholaal Mohamed on Unsplash

Our lips touched, and everything stopped. My heart. My lungs. Time. Void of light behind closed eyes, the universe opened itself up, presenting me with a gift.

The gift to control time.

The lightless world consumed me as I fell deeper into her. Her fingers, twisting around my own, made sure I couldn’t be lost. That I could be pulled out. My mind took over for what my eyes could not see. It showed me more than my eyes could ever see. I could see the two of us from above, her body under the bed covers, my body above. I watched as her arm wrapped around me, pulling me in. And yet I could feel the warmth of her lips, smell the softener of her sheets.

Timelessness froze the moment, even as it played out. It built the moment into my memory, from every side. From every angle. It captured every sense. Every color. Every shadow.

A frozen moment lasts for eternity

As lips separated, eyes opened and lungs pulled for air, the illusion of time once again began. The world, and our lives, had changed. And yet I could not control the ability to break free of time.

Only love could make that kind of a decision.

When The Love Is Real, The Illusion Of Time Fades

Bypassing whatever you might call grade and high school relationships, she was the first girlfriend I ever had. The first girl I was excited to introduce to my parents. A friend from out of town came to visit during winter break. I introduced the two. When we left my friend turned to me, his eyes wide. He said he’d never seen someone look at another the way she looked at me.

I’ve yet to hear that compliment since. I was 19. She was 20.

All other kisses in my life are dwarfed by the first time our lips touched. I fear I hit my peak before I could legally drink or rent a car. With the moment, forever frozen in time. Forever there in my memory. Should I reach old age and succumb to the loss of memory, I’m almost certain the time we finally kissed would be retained.

Because all other physical activity has taken place within the realm of time. Within its boundaries. That first kiss happened outside of it. Time stealing my thoughts wouldn’t know how to reach it. The corrupting tentacles of age could sift and pull, but the place where that experience resides would never be discovered.

These kinds of moments don’t present themselves at every corner or with every relationship. You can’t choose when it happens either.

It just happens.

And it’s better that way.

The Universe Chooses When Time No Longer Exists, Not You

The mind often doesn’t know what it needs. Instead, it often convinces itself of what it wants. It wants a particular relationship to work out. For a particular moment to unfold in a certain way. Inner conflict can blindfold the mind’s eye, preventing it from fully realizing what relationships need to end. What experiences should never take place?

It’s a good thing I’m not able to choose what memories remain and what moments break the bonds of time. Because if I was, I’d be left with a brain full of timeless experiences of no substance.

Instead, the universe chooses. It knows the combination to a timeless experience. I’d abuse the power, freezing moments that did not deserve to be stopped. Creating memories that did not deserve to be remembered. It’s why I’m grateful the decision is not up to me, and yet I do know one of the key ingredients: love.

Love lets me, you, and everyone else in this world stop time. We may not be able to control it, but when true love is there, it’s always a possibility.

Kissing someone you’ve loved for years, and yet you’re only now realizing it. Hugging a family member you haven’t seen in what seems like a lifetime. The touch of their hands, the smell of their skin, all familiar. All branded into your memory. And as your eyes close and the illusion of top breaks down, it’s possible to take in so much more.

The universe understands without love, stopping time isn’t necessary. It would only prove pointless. The illusion might move faster or slower, but without love, it will never stop.

It’s Not Always In Good Times

Time doesn’t only stop during the good. It solidifies memories during the bad as well. When the doctor gathered my sisters and mom, her sister and another together, to tell me my father had passed on, that it was then nothing more than a formality to remove hoses and flip switches, everything stopped.

But my mind recorded something very different from the first kiss. It didn’t record sounds. It didn’t record smells or cries or colors other than the bright lights of the side room we were all gathered in. It recorded what happened inside of me. The heaviness of my heart, the way it beat harder than it ever had before. As if attempting to lend itself to beat for the dead man in the other room. It recorded the trap door under my chest as it dropped open, and how a cold wind funneled inside my very being. It recorded my inability to cry. The numbness of the doctor’s words prevented me from doing so.

That numbness did not last.

I did not pick that moment for time to stop. For a three-dimensional map of my emotions to be recorded and saved. I can’t say I would have chosen such a moment to be locked into. To always be reminded of. But few moments change a person like the sudden loss of family. The sudden loss of love.

Not that my love for him went anywhere. But the love he had for me faded with him.

You Can’t Control Time, But Love Can

There’s no magic recipe for controlling time. I wish I could tell you I knew how. And yet, maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s best we all experience those time-halting moments as the universe intends us to. The good and the bad. It knows when the ingredients are perfect when the combination is right. But one thing is for sure, where there’s love, there’s the ability to stop time.