Time Is All Around

Before I start, I want to say I like philaphobic’s interpretation too.

Now then.

I’m one of the unfortunate few who don’t fall in love on the third date, or the fifth, or the fiftieth. It’s not until years after I’ve met someone that I suddenly at some moment realize I’ve drifted into love for them. This has only happened with friends; significant others, of course, are not willing to wait. My dating escapades always end in a “This isn’t working out” or “You don’t seem like you’re into this” or even the ever-ridiculous “Why are you afraid to love?”

To me, this is what this song is about. I might be way off from what Regina was thinking when she penned it, but as she has so many not-love songs I have to wonder.

“You step on all my parts / And then you walk right out the door / And I know that your love ain't never / Coming back no more.” The speaker has been dating someone, and — I’ll say he for the sake of simplicity — he has become impatient with her inability to fall in love with him right away. So he breaks up with her, giving her all the reasons it isn’t working (stepping on or breaking up her parts — her self).

“Time is all around / Except inside my clock / Everybody's waiting for their lover to unlock.” But there’s plenty of time to fall in love! There’s time all over the place! Barring some tragic death, there’s so much time in a lifetime to allow love to grow. But nobody wants to wait for her love — she’s given no time (inside her clock/herself/the relationship). Everyone has to wait for their significant other to open up and show themselves completely in trust — these things take time.

“Leaves become most beautiful when they're about to die / When they're about to fall from trees / When they're about to dry up.” These lines mean two things to me. The first is that she is in the process of falling in love with these men when they break up with her. The relationship has died with the breakup, but her love (the leaf) was just starting (becoming beautiful). The second meaning is that love is most beautiful in old age, when the love has been given time to blossom, when two people have been together an entire lifetime.

“I hallucinate a cat between my feet / I'm stepping lightly so as not to hurt it.” She knows what will happen when she gets into a relationship. She knows it hurts the men that she dates too — the cat is the man. She treads carefully, trying to make it work and trying to make the man not fall in love with her so quickly, trying to be aloof. She has to pretend all this because that’s not how she would normally act if she thought the guy would understand. She might even be trying to pretend she’s in love already to make him happy.

“Everybody wants / To say that you have changed / Of course you've changed, you've changed, you've changed / Your mind's been rearranged.” This part is hard to put into words, because it means a lot of different subtle things to me. In a relationship, you change, your mind changes, the way you think changes. People outside the relationship always act surprised at this, but it’s to be expected. Love does that to your brain — it’s science, you get a little stupid when you’re in love. But he’s changing too fast for her, falling in love too fast.

“Why am I supposed to love if I don't want to love? / Why am I supposed to, I'm so tired.” There it is. Why is she SUPPOSED to love him? Why is she obligated to do this on command? She’s tired of the obligations and the having to pussyfoot around and pretend she’s something she’s not, and she’s tired of not being given time, time, time. If he would only give it time, the leaves would turn beautiful.