“Time can do all sorts of things. It’s almost like a magician. It can turn autumn into spring and babies into children, seeds into flowers and tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into cocoons, and cocoons into butterflies. And life into death. There’s nothing that time can’t do. Except run backwards. That’s its trouble really, it can only go one way.”
Time is not my own. It belongs to too many others. There are inside others and outside others and they all want too much of my time.
It makes me crazy and scrappy and bitey. And then I yell and scream and make a mess and everyone is like, what the hell happened to her? why did she go crazy on us?
And I say to myself DUH, because I want my OWN time. To do what I want. Not what the internet tells me to want or what you want or what my husband wants or what my teenager wants. And definitely not what the makeup companies that are busy trying to convince me that I need to do something about my wrinkly neck and gray hairs want.
I want my OWN time to paint rocks and leaves and twigs and write stories and eat gooey grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup and swing in the hammock. I want time to do nothing and not go to Costco and not put gas in the car and not fill out another goddamned medical insurance form.
Sometimes you have to stop time and grab it by the shoulders and march it to the corner and say “Sit down and shut up, you son of a bitch. We are going to do things my way for a bit.” And that makes for a very good day, with ice cream and reading in the porch swing, and listening to music that makes your heart crack in half a little. And then you and time can start to be friends again.
Hi Autumn, I understand. Thanks for sharing how time is feeling for you right now.