Love Lessons from Literature: Awhile in Time

Awhile (adv.): for a period of time.

I went through a breakup over a year and a half ago. This was a painful one; the kind of breakup that exposes unfamiliar depths of emotional pain. The kind of breakup that leaves you with a deep sense of sorrow, almost mourning, over both the person they were and the person you thought they were. At one point in time, this breakup made me miss the person that I once was. Indeed, this breakup happened awhile ago. Alongside therapy, I relied heavily on books to heal my heart. Beneath a mountain of empowering and self-help books downloaded on my Kindle, I came across The Lover’s Dictionary. As the title suggests, this book goes through each letter, A to Z, defining words and providing brief examples of how these terms relate to the universal feelings and experiences shared by those in and out of love. While some words were unmemorable or rather generic, this word stuck with me. “Awhile.”

Awhile. I love the vagueness of words that involve time. It took him ‘awhile’ to come back – it could be a matter of days or years, minutes or hours. It’s easy for me to say it took a while to know. That’s about as accurate as it gets. There were sneak previews of knowing for sure, instances that made me feel, oh, this could be right…perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there’s no one single event. There’s just a steady period of ‘awhile’.

Time is significant. It is the most precious gift we can give and the most genuine gift we can receive. It is something we can neither reverse nor replace. Time is something that passes whether we’re active or stagnant, awake or dreaming. Time is expansive and confining all at the same time. In relationships, time represents an unknown future. However, time may also be used to justify stereotypical next steps, such as engagement or moving in together or getting a dog. Couples who have spent years together outside of wedlock are urged to get married because they have been together for extended periods of time. We use time as a solid measurement to stand in place for indescribable emotions and experiences—such as falling in, and living in love. And yet, we refuse to believe that time is often spent on people, places, and relationships that are only justified by the sheer amount of time lost on them. For example, an uninspiring relationship that lasts many years becomes rather tricky to end due to the amount of time shared between the two people, regardless of whether the two people actually love each other. The time element in these relationships is what makes two people believe that they love each other. Those years of commitment makes parting rather daunting. And yet, short relationships lasting mere blips in time remain incomparable on the colloquial relationship hierarchy; the couple that has been together for years surely loves their partner more than the couple together for mere months. I fiercely disagree with this hierarchy. The depth of love in the short relationship may be far greater than that in the long relationship, though the measurement of time suggests otherwise. Perhaps time is significant, though less significant as a measurement to justify what is substantial and what is not.

That is why I love this quote. The term “awhile” is so vague and yet so meaningful. To fall in love with someone after spending a while in their company may refer to hours, weeks, months, or years. Awhile is not a stagnant measurement of time but rather a blanket term to describe chapter of experience. I had lunch with a girlfriend a while back who has been seeing someone for what one might describe as “a while.” For her, this vague measurement of time validates this relationship and fulfils an aspiration to continue sticking with it for a while longer to see which way it plays out; whether the relationship remains casual or turns into something more serious. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while,” she assures me. She’s not wrong; in fact, she’s been seeing this individual for significantly longer than I’ve even known my partner. And yet, a while--this while--means something different to us both.

However, time, in this case, is an inaccurate unit of measurement. Time justifies a relationship’s continuation rather than substantiating a relationship’s history. Time, in this case, buries feelings of pain and lovelessness behind a curtain of false prosperity; this time, it will be different. This time must signify something. This raises the question: What does time signify? At work, a long-term employee may lose a promotion to new hire. In school, a student who studies eighteen hours a day may still receive a lower score than the student who studies for three. In sport, one athlete may excel beyond another regardless of the time spent in training. In love, the partner who shares a bed with you for years may still love you less than the person whom they take out for a second date tomorrow night. In all these cases, time proves to be an irrelevant explanation. Time does not reason who is worthy of the promotion, the top grade, the gold medal, or the heart. Time is merely something ticking away in the background. Indeed, time is just a steady period of ‘awhile’.