If I Loved You Once, I Love You Always

Everything has its time and time always has its place. With that said, time is not one entity—time is a catch-all term for a collection of eternally combined moments, a collection of snippets. Therefore, although time is never ending and tightly stitched, it is simultaneously divided by knots. Said knots act as resilient dams that block the overflow of new collections to be made, cherished, prized, and above all, experienced.

The connection of the tightly stitched string is threaded with each experience, lesson, and memory that still remains in our hearts and souls. The separated knots themselves are what allows the moments to render the truth that they hold—a truth that lives in that moment and, very possibly, that moment only. Each truth being that the feelings that were once felt do exist forever but exist in those divided sets of knitted strings, divided sections of life’s thread.

Some moments find their way into multiple sets and collections, easily being welcomed from one set to the next, moseying in before the next knot is in place. These moments are ones that continue to carry specific feelings and memories onward into following ones, some of these never failing to find their way in the present. Some moments live through all of our time.

Is this true? Who knows. But I’ll tell you, the idea that I can forever love what I once did but can move on without questioning the past and without doubting having followed my heart, no matter the timeframe it lived in, helps me sleep at night. And to sleep helps me to dream, and to dream is to get lost in those nightly frames of time dedicated to our subconscious. Like time, dreams are outside of our control—like time, dreams are where the truth unfolds.

So, if I loved you once. I love you always, and if I loved you once, I may also not love you now. Because I loved you in a time that is tied to a collection of moments that is no longer my present. But dare I say that I may see you in a dream every once in a while, and maybe time reminisces with the past selves it evolved from—dare I say I can see you then with the love I once did. Dare I say I’m okay with it.

That’s what matters. That it is okay. That we are okay. That you are okay. That I am okay. Okay with what? The heart. The soul. The mind. The memories. The confusion. The revelation. The love. The loss.

So, yes, I can love you still and I can’t love you again, too. You can say the same to me and they to you.

Time is forever, but it’s moments become memories, and memories live in a place called the Past that we once nicknamed Present. For everything has its time, and time always has its place.