I’ve never really had an appropriate relationship with time. Some part of me seems to be chronally mutated. I tumble throughout my own timeline, blurring what is past and what is future, slipping out of the present to plummet into a memory or a daydream.
Right now, I can’t seem to orient myself. I’m living in a space that’s completely liminal, completely undecided. Staring up at every strand of the future makes me dizzy, leaves colorful shadows of light dancing across my frame of vision. But the past is just as painful to dip into, if not more.
Every feeling in memory is so tangible, so saturated. I only look in their direction and it’s not a memory anymore—it’s now. It’s not a memory, it’s right now that my heart is healed and torn into pieces with just one sentence. It’s right now that I fight to run out of the room and down the street instead of staying exactly where I want to be. It’s not then, it’s now that I wrap a shroud around my heart for the millionth time and pull away when I want nothing more than to move closer.
In that churning sea, I lose my sense of place, my grip on reason. I know what I want, but can’t decide how far I’m willing to go for it. Denying myself—my choices, my feelings—only makes it that much harder to keep my grip on reality, to make sense of who I am, to have any idea which direction to go next. I can’t tell the difference between self-love and self-acceptance and just plain selfish. And that thought sends me running as fast as I possibly can.
But no matter how far or how fast I run, I always come back—and I can’t tell if it’s fate or flaw. I suppose only time will tell, but… I’ve never really had an appropriate relationship with time.