On Time
Last night I was overcome by a sense of loss so strong I almost cried, when I realized that the days were getting shorter.
I am tyrannized by the unrelenting passage of time; every hour is another jackbooted thug come to steal my life away from me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
When I’m alone there’s a faint panic in the back of my head as the minutes march on and I realize I’ve done nothing with my day. The next day will dawn, fresh and new and gleaming, and for all intents and purposes, it will be exactly the same as this day because I have done nothing to change or improve my life in that wasted 16 hours that I just spent in front of various screens.
At work, it’s not so bad. Killing time seems to be my primary purpose. Sometimes I have to hurry to finish up something I’ve been procrastinating on, but for the most part, I get paid $33,000 a year to come and sit in my office 8 hours a day 5 days a week, so I do it. The time I waste here is the way I pay my bills; I don’t regret it or wish for it back. It’s a fair trade.
I think it’s in my interactions with others that the feeling is the worst. Sooner or later, all the people I love will be gone. They’ll die, or we’ll lose touch, or having a falling out; ex boyfriends will find new girlfriends who will be threatened by me, or I’ll be threatened by them, and we’ll stop speaking; people who once loved me will stop; people who never quite loved me never quite will. It is inevitable, n'est-il pas?
And when they are gone, when our connection to each other is severed, and I have given them all that I can give, and received from them all they’ll ever give me; will it be enough? Will I feel cheated? Will I anguish over the time we should have had? Am I using the time we are given as well as I possibly could?
This is what I wonder. This is what makes me slip glances at the clock once an hour, no matter what I’m doing - I have to know, I have to keep track. Maybe we could be talking more, talking less, being closer or quieter or more honest or more funny. What if you leave and I never get to peek inside you? What if I leave and you find out you never knew me? What if you die and I spend the next three years of my life adding it up - every night I stayed home alone, every time I didn’t really listen, every time I was smarmy when I should have been genuine - and I find it makes up a lifetime? What do I do then?
What have I lost, in the missing hours of my life? What could I have become in the time I spent watching TV I don’t even like? What choices made, or still to be made, carry the weight of shaping my life? How many of them get blown off so I can watch a rerun of Friends?
The days are getting shorter. Last night, the dark surprised me, and feeling without thinking, tears rose in my eyes. It’s just one day. One inconsequential moment of time slipping away from me - but in that moment I mourned for every single thing that I’ve never had, and never will.