In Time's Turning

Time's wheel turns, and dust settles even on sweet memories; even the colors of fierce love begin to fade.

The person who once rushed to you from miles away just to catch a glimpse of you will one day turn their face away even while sitting mere inches beside you. When affection is lost, people vanish too.

The one who couldn't live without you, who clung to your feet crying "Don't leave me!" — time's cruel blow transforms that very person into someone who abandons you and becomes someone else's before your very eyes. Some people switch hearts with frightening ease.

The person who grew restless when your message didn't arrive for an hour will one day mercilessly block you, cutting off those very messages they once craved.

Time passes, days-months-years roll by, and affection for them accumulates in your chest, mountain upon mountain; while their affection for you, whatever remained, erodes away until it sinks into underground depths. Sometimes love is such a perishable thing.

You'll watch the South Pole drift north and the North Pole drift south right before your eyes. You'll watch in silence — there will be nothing left to do.

They leave, they change colors, bit by bit they cross the boundaries of your circle and enter another. You simply grow weary counting their abandoned footprints from behind.

You'll understand that your happiness has become a peddler's cart, following the trail of their discarded footsteps. There's nothing you can do. Someone who wants to leave can be tied down at best, but never truly held. Tying them down yields not love, but only extorted fear.

People don't change. What changes is their needs and where they place their love.
You'll see that the space once entirely in your possession has been claimed by another who pushed you aside.

You understood everything, but pretended not to, staying silent from fear of losing them. People are afraid of loss, so they willingly accept defeat.

This is how people lose people. This is how the intimate becomes distant, how strangers become intimate again. As long as people live, this game continues.

One day we accept this change, quietly enduring the ache of lost affection. Yet somewhere in the heart, a tiny hole forms in secret, through which our well-being seeps out and dissolves into emptiness.

We never find that well-being again. No, we don't even search for it anymore! Without wondering whether we're well or not, we simply keep in mind... we exist!

Indeed, one day we spend our lives without even considering whether we're truly well. The very thought of well-being becomes terrifying!