# Parallel The universe, in its infinite sprawl, unfolds through countless intersecting planes. We move within them as travelers unaware of the roads beneath our feet. Two lines, never to meet, yet bound by the same geometry—this is the paradox that has haunted human thought since we first learned to draw and name the shapes of our bewilderment. To speak of the parallel is to speak of proximity without communion, of kinship without touch. It is the condition of the modern soul—surrounded yet solitary, present yet estranged. We live our lives parallel to one another, our existences running alongside, sometimes illuminated by the same light, yet never converging. Mathematics promised us certainty, a language in which the parallel could be named with precision. Two lines in a plane, equidistant, never intersecting, stretching into infinity together and apart. It was a comfort, perhaps, to imagine such purity—such absolute isolation blessed by the seal of geometric truth. But life, cruel in its refusal to be simplified, offers no such comfort. Consider the parallel roads of a city. They speak of intention, of order imposed upon chaos. Yet the traveler on one road never truly knows the traveler on the other. Their journeys are separate narratives, woven into the same urban fabric, yet authored by different hands. They may glimpse each other across the distance, may feel the strange pull of proximity, the sense that salvation or ruin lies just a street away. But the street itself remains—the distance maintained, the separation preserved. We are all parallel to something. To our lovers, in the deepest night. To our children, who will never fully know the rooms of our hearts. To God, perhaps, if God exists—forever approaching, forever at a distance prescribed by the very nature of the infinite. The parallel is not merely a geometric truth; it is the fundamental condition of consciousness. To be aware is to be separate. To know is to be forever divided from what we know. Yet there is also a strange beauty in this parallelism. It is what allows for individuality, for the singular perspective, for the unrepeatable music of a single life. The moment the parallel lines converge, they cease to be themselves. They become a point—singular, unified, and in that unity, erased.

The person you neglect while you have them—someone else might be lifting both hands to heaven, begging God for just one chance to hold them.

You cut short their calls with irritation—"Stop calling me so much! I'm busy"—but somewhere, someone waits by the phone in desperate hope for a single ring from them.

You read their messages and leave them on seen, or unread, your brow furrowing at the endless notifications, yet someone else keeps their phone on all night, eyes open, waiting for just one word from them. A single chime might send another's heart racing with joy. The person you keep waiting—they, too, are keeping someone else waiting.

Day after day they swallow neglect and indifference, clinging to you like a tortoise gripping soil, choosing you as their reason to live. Then one day everything shifts. On one side, your neglect, your carelessness; on the other, care and prayers from someone else. Slowly, imperceptibly, the person begins to change. Because people—being people—they change.

Like two parallel lines pointing in opposite directions, their disinterest in you and their growing attraction to another both rise together. This sight is not easy to bear.

In their heart, feelings bloom—like a water lily suddenly flowering in a neglected pond—toward the one who tends to them. They lean toward that person like dew drops bowing at dawn. Your side of the scale grows lighter; in equal measure, something like affection, something like longing, begins to form for the other. 

Day after day, hands raised in prayer, calling out to God—and then one day, He answers. Love takes root between two people. You, who once held first place, become suddenly dispensable, a third person of no consequence. You won't even notice when you start slipping away. The distance grows before you realize you're distant.

Now they no longer text you through the day and night. They don't call whenever they think of you. The sound of your voice no longer stirs their chest.

Then one morning, waking from sleep into a blindingly white dawn, you find only darkness before your eyes—because the person who cared for you like a mother no longer sends calls, no longer sends messages.

Even standing in a sun-scorched courtyard packed with a thousand people, you will feel an odd, terrible loneliness that you cannot quite explain to anyone. 

As if you've lost something. As if you've lost someone. Though your chest still holds bone and blood and flesh and heart, it will feel to you like a wasteland, a desert's hollow center.

You'll want them back—they won't return. You'll ask for forgiveness—they'll smile and walk away without answering. You'll stand behind them, mouth open, watching as all your happiness walks away without once looking back. Once you've tasted the joy of being cared for, you can never again settle for neglect. A dog or cat kept at home, if shown care, will cling to you; how much more fiercely does a human being cling to tenderness.

Then one day you'll understand: you've lost. You've lost in the most vile, wretched way. Not because people leave—not because they can't stay. But when someone who was your entire world learns to leave, you'll discover that your whole world has suddenly become empty.