Standing in Quicksand, Sinking in Time

Time is a funny little mistress. You’re attached to it, but it can disappear without warning. Some days, weeks, and months feel begrudgingly long, with no end in sight. And then a year disappears right before your eyes. Then two. Then three. They fall away with reckless abandon.

At one point, you were smaller than the kitchen counter, standing on your tip toes to see what was for dinner. Running around in the dark, sprinting barefoot, chasing fireflies. Watching bubbles fly toward the sky, your tiny reflection looking back, eyes wide, bewildered.

Then, you’re staring at a locker, grabbing your books for class. Your pink razor phone in hand, you walk the halls of middle school. Giggling with friends, studying hard so you can get into a good college one day. You have all the time in the world.

There’s a tassel in your face, you’re robed up and walking toward a man holding a bound booklet. The scene is a blur, but you hear your name called. How is high school ending already? You take your diploma, and smile for the photos that will capture this moment in time, to be placed on a bookshelf alongside all the other moments.

You’re sitting at a computer staring at the cursor, frozen. There’s a graduate school exam book sitting on the desk, pictures from the last three years of college sprawled along the walls. Three years up and vanished. Each memory crystal clear in your mind, but seemingly distant.

The longer time goes on, the faster it leaves you. It’s quicksand. You feel it encasing you, but you can’t move, you can’t stop it. Time is a good thing; it allows for change, it allows for healing. But it’s also wild. Time moves at a pace that is hard to keep up with.

So, you keep running, once again sprinting barefoot and hoping you can catch up to it, before you too disappear in the quicksand.