A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

The line captures a recurring Kerouac theme: the ache of transience in a world defined by motion, chance encounters, and diverging paths. The “too-big world” suggests both freedom and alienation—vastness that makes connection feel fragile and easily lost. The repeated “every time” turns a single moment into a pattern, implying the narrator’s romantic longing is inseparable from his itinerant life: desire flares, but circumstances (direction, travel, restlessness) pull people apart. The “stabbed” pain is sudden and bodily, emphasizing how emotional loss arrives as an immediate shock rather than a reflective sadness.