“Maybe it’s just that we’re all at the centers of our own little universes, and sometimes they overlap with other people’s, and that small bit of intersection leaves some part of it changed. The collision can wreck us, change us, shift us.” - Brianna Wiest, “How the People We Once Loved Become Strangers Again”
Eight months ago I took a walk with a friend who was asking me for advice on pursuing a romantic interest with a murky path forward. Rather sappily, I told her what had just been read to me the night before: that we are all universes, and that sometimes we collide. Even if it’s just a split second collision in the grand scheme of things, the particles are never quite the same. And isn’t that beautiful? That we shape each other. That our lovers become part of us forever. All we can do after a collision is to look forward and keep orbiting the cosmos—our atoms radically altered; our galaxies rearranged. I told her: go ahead and collide. Life is too short not to.
The way I see it, our hearts are extremely sensitive. The slightest poke, and immediate pain fills our bodies. We learn to construct armor around our hearts. We build up walls and barricades until we can’t tell the difference between a hug and a punch. Sometimes we let down our walls for another soul; we allow the collision to run its course. Sometimes in our vulnerability they punch us, and we build the walls back even thicker. Sometimes we get punched and we let them in anyway, or we get a hug and push them away; we accept the love we think we deserve. Sometimes we miss it when a soul tries to give our heart a hug because we’re so used to punches that we brace for impact and push them away. The collision isn’t painless, after all. When your universe is enmeshed in another’s, they have access to all the planets that you hide in the distant recesses, past the black holes and dying stars. No one can do damage to you like a lover can. The permanent alteration of our atoms and galaxies and planets that another universe causes isn’t always as innocent as our minds shifting back to their eyes when we hear a particular song. Sometimes it’s trauma. Sometimes it’s the fear of ever loving again.
Eight months after the walk, I’m starting to think about the fact that we are all universes a bit differently now. We are all universes, it’s true, which means that we are so wrapped up in our own minds and lives that every action we perform is so entirely about us. Ruiz says that nothing is personal—that every insult directed at you is projection, that hatred is simply the absence of self-love in another, that others are not thinking of you as much as you think they are thinking of you. Why would I fear loving, then? It’s never been about me. The rejections, the betrayals, the pain and the joy—all of it.
“Imagine living without the fear of loving and not being loved. You are no longer afraid to be rejected, and you don’t have the need to be accepted. You can say “I love you” with no shame or justification. You can walk in the world with your heart completely open, and not be afraid to be hurt.”
We have two responses to collision theory: to hesitantly spin around the cosmos, shying away from universes, afraid of rejection or betrayal—or we can orbit with ease, knowing that love is not a finite resource. We can spread love as contagiously as imaginable and still have more to give. We can love a soul so urgently and tenderly—and then we can do it again, after the collision has ended. We can love vulnerably and get poked, and then recognize that the attack was never about us. Therefore, we can say I love you without expectation and we can bump into others, we can let our atoms be altered and we can one day appreciate those rearrangements. I don’t believe that betrayal once, that rejection once, is cause for us to give up on the beauty of love altogether. I don’t believe that getting your heart poked is cause for a thicker wall. Love pushes out all fear. I would rather say I love you and not hear it back than to never say it. I would rather be vulnerable and get hurt than to be barricaded in apathy forever. I still believe that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
This made my heart ache in the best way. Like the end of a movie where everyone knows things so t go back to the way they were before, and there’s still some hurt and tenderness, but it’s all okay.