the ballad of red roses and bad timings

well, ballad, red roses, bad timings. it’s almost valentine’s week. i promise this isn’t some jazz night theatre monologue but rather something i have been observing and keep tripping over, now and then. red roses have always been dramatic. too loud in colour, too certain of what they are meant to be and what they mean. like standing with a bright red muffler in a crowd of grey suits and black pants. like, i don’t remember the last time someone brought roses for me, not to mention that roses in any colour give me the cringe. so i instead received pastel flowers last valentines’ and i still have them tucked around somewhere.

there’s something about a specific set of flowers which are just a loaded thing. and somehow they have been over-romanticized or classified so much that they are no longer a basic casual affair. and red roses are one of them like they are supposed to mean too much love at the present moment. like, right now i love you, right now i choose you, and right now this makes sense. they’re very present tense flowers. nobody gives red roses casually. you don’t toss them into your grocery cart and say ‘yeah, this feels chill’.

and then there’s bad timings and let’s throw some light on how red roses and bad timings keep finding each other from time to time.

so if you have been lucky or more so unlucky enough to have come across love more than once, then i guess this is for you. lately, my feed has been loaded with ‘right people-wrong timings’ theories. so if you are not familiar with it, just think of it as you meet someone, you become more than friends and then all of a sudden you two have to move to different places and get busy with your schedules and stuff. and then the love or whatever slowly starts fading and you two just feel like you would be better off without each other. like maybe the person was right or appeared to be but you just decide to dump things on bad timings and blame wrong timelines and just move on. “So hey this feeling is real, i love you and all, but i think the moment and place is wrong”. which is honestly kinda rude.

i think the saddest version of romance isn’t the one-sided affair, it’s in fact the mutual ones that show up at the wrong hour, on the wrong calendar page, or in the middle of unfinished versions of people. the emotions are real and valid but the logistic constraints whisper ‘uhm not today’.

bad timings are when you cross paths with someone who feels emotionally comforting or physically your type and both of you just click like your nervous system recognizes them even before your brain catches up. and then you find yourself sitting right beside them with a metaphorical bouquet in your hands but your life is a mess or their life is a mess, or both of you are mid-construction with emotional caution tapes everywhere.

this is the thing with fancy bouquets and valentine cards. they don’t wait for your timings or your five-year plan and don’t care if you needed five days extra time to heal from a burnout or heartbreak. if they have arrived with a bottle of champagne, you know it’s a declared love affair. the whole valentine package just sits there in the dining table waiting for you to come and be all ready for romance all again. almost too inconveniently. and this is where bad timings sound familiar again, ‘pretty flowers, wrong season’, they are gonna die too soon.

i guess a lot of times have been so that you didn’t have the emotional bandwidth and mental space and maturity to fit something that feels so demanding. and in the meantime while you are trying to figure out where to put this or in which hand to hold it, you end up spilling things over and create a mess. like buying fresh scented flowers but all you have is a cracked vase at home that leaks water.

it’s officially the era of “i’m not ready for anything serious at the moment” said sincerely with no strings attached, while still feeling everything deeply and reconsidering your decisions. most times this is covered in some naïve excuse like wrapping cute christmas presents. but declaring it ‘oops, bad timings’ is an unforgivable state of offence. mostly, bad timings is self awareness. sometimes, it is avoidance. rarely it is both at once, which is honestly the most confusing combo. so my very-logical-but-not-so-love-lucky mind would have thought that this is just an excuse made up by people when they are just so done with love-related things and were just too lazy because they didn’t want something enough. like if you really wanted it, you would do your very best to make it work. it’s as simple as that. very movie logic but actually very unrealistic.

but now i realise it’s about capacity. someone may love you tons but may still not be able to show up for you in ways you deserve. you can feel love but still be too exhausted, tired, annoyed, busy, whatever. and knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less, it just makes it more easily acceptable.

and this is the exact moment where ballad comes in because ballads aren’t happy songs. they are reflective and they linger to tell stories about things that mattered once upon a time. about almost-loves and about wrong timings that you still chased and tried to best to work upon.

it’s easy to romanticise red roses. but no one talks about forcing roses in vases that are already cracked.

and sometimes the ballad isn’t about regret, it’s about acknowledging and acceptance. about saying, yeah that was real, it mattered. but somehow it didn’t work out. weirdly enough, this is the most adult sentence you can say.

so if you’re listening to this and feel like, oh i am stuck in a red roses moment in the middle of a bad timeline, you’re not dramatic. you’re just a human.

and maybe-just maybe-the roses bloomed in the wrong season, at the wrong garden.