la la land and the orbit of almost

a cosmic lesson in love, timing, and collapse

Jul 04, 2025

and here’s to the fools that dream

la la land has always been one of those films i return to like muscle memory. not because it changes, but because somehow, i do. the colours, the music, the magic of two people falling into something soft and starry. it all felt like something i couldn’t name but desperately wanted to hold. like the early universe suspended in stillness, every moment saturated with potential. i watched mia and sebastian meet, dream, fall, try. i watched them dance beneath the low golden sky of los angeles, float across the planetarium like gravity had never touched them. like two particles skimming the edge of collision. and every time, i found myself enchanted by the love story they shared. until the ending.

i never understood the ending. i never understood how they could survive all that love and still become strangers. i hated that she showed up at his jazz club with someone else. i hated that we had to watch their “what if,” that cruel montage of the life they might have had if timing had been kinder. i wanted them to win. i thought love meant you were supposed to.

but back then, i had never really been in love. not the kind that opens you up from the inside out. not the kind that softens you and teaches you, slowly, what it means to be known. i didn’t know what it meant to fall into someone’s orbit, to feel your internal landscape shift like the earth adjusting to the moon’s pull. i hadn’t yet learned that connection can feel cosmic before it becomes real. that sometimes, love feels like the birth of a star, impossible and bright and burning too hot to hold. that sometimes, love arrives like a supernova, beautiful in its glow and devastating in its aftermath.

and now that i have, everything makes sense.

now i understand that planetarium scene. the one where they begin to float, suspended in wonder, orbiting one another like moons caught in each other’s field. because that’s exactly how it feels when love is still new and untouched by atmosphere. when the air between you feels thin and glittering. when you’re laughing without fear, when your heart expands past the edges of your body. it’s rare. and like all rare alignments, it doesn’t last forever. but for a while, you believe it might. you believe you’ve found something strong enough to defy collapse. your entire body believes. your breath changes. time stretches. even silence feels golden, like light filtered through leaves.

like mia and sebastian, i thought we were safe in the love we shared. he wasn’t chasing distant dreams or disappearing into another galaxy. he stayed. he showed up in his own uneven way. he wasn’t cruel, just unstable. he tried, even if he didn’t always know how. and for a long time, i thought that was enough. i thought care could close the distance. i thought tenderness could hold the structure together. i thought if i anchored hard enough, neither of us would drift.

but the laws of motion apply to hearts, too. just as in physics, where an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force, feelings and people can drift apart even when you try to hold them close. no amount of stillness or effort can stop a heart that is already moving away.

what i know now is that even stars that form together don’t always stay bound. some systems are unstable by design. people can love you and still fail to meet you where it matters. they can want to stay and still drift. even gravity lets go, eventually, if the angle is wrong. even the most intimate forces have limits. love, as it turns out, isn’t a fixed point. it’s a space we move through, and not everyone knows how. some people walk beside you only for a season. some only touch down long enough to stir everything up, and leave.

i still think about him. i won’t pretend otherwise. sometimes my heart plays the “what if” montage and i let myself linger there, just for a breath. just long enough to ache. the ache is a soft weight in my chest, a pulse that reminds me love was once possible. because now, i understand that hope can feel like a second sun. beautiful, blinding, too much. i know how easily longing disguises itself as fate. and i know what it feels like to place your heart in someone’s hands and realise they’re still trying to understand how to hold it. sometimes they never learn. and sometimes, you keep handing it over anyway, hoping.

one day, another orbit will shift. perhaps i’ll pass someone new in another season, in another version of my life. but for now, i’m learning to love myself in the quiet between trajectories. maybe this is the season for choosing myself with both hands. maybe detachment isn’t the absence of emotion, but the conservation of it. the refusal to pour endlessly into something that cannot hold it. maybe those of us who love like collapsing stars need to remember we are allowed to cool. we are allowed to survive the burn. the body is built for survival, even when the heart forgets.

i’m learning, slowly, that it’s possible to carry love like starlight in my chest and still walk in the opposite direction. that loving someone deeply doesn’t mean offering them every version of yourself. that choosing yourself isn’t an escape route. it’s a kind of gravity, too. something ancient and wise pulling you back to your own centre. and maybe that’s what healing really is, not forgetting, but recalibrating. not erasing what was, but learning how to orbit around the ache without falling into it.

and now, finally, the ending of la la land feels right to me. mia didn’t stay in something that no longer held her. she didn’t wait for him to grow into what she needed. she gave him chances, and when he couldn’t meet her where she stood, she let go. she built a life with a different rhythm, one that didn’t require translation. and when they saw each other again, yes, it was bittersweet. but there was a quiet recognition in her eyes. a nod between parallel lives. a goodbye that didn’t need language. like a distant star flickering just once more before disappearing from view.

because sometimes, love is real, and still, it unravels. sometimes, no matter how tightly you hold on, the other person lets go. and the most romantic thing you can do for yourself is walk away before you start to disappear.

the universe began not with light, but with a rupture.

a soft, irreversible shift that made motion possible. and maybe that’s what endings are, too. not failures, but thresholds. not silence, but the space in which something new might begin to form. not the end of gravity, but its redirection.

and i think i am finally ready to return to my own orbit. to honour the way i moved through that love, and to believe that something just as luminous might find me again. maybe not as fireworks, but as warmth. not as a collision, but as a quiet alignment.

and this time, i will know how to stay grounded in the light.

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