Stuck in Time

Days used to feel so soft and gentle, like a sweet caress that would send me into fits of laughter as it tickled my skin. But now things have changed: the days don’t feel as if they have been suspended in time anymore, they no longer create a space especially for us just to exist, and I’m no longer a child holding onto my mother’s legs as she tries to shake me off. 

Time and the days that follow have become a violent thing. They whip by faster and faster every day, never giving me a chance to catch it in between my fingers. Time zooms past my ear like an annoying fly. I would turn to try and catch it in the palms of my hands, but I would always fail and that grating, buzzing sound would continue to play off in the distance as if taunting me. It knows that I want to catch it, but it avoids and eludes me like two magnets that are each other’s opposites, only clashing for a moment before pushing each other away.

Time will not slow for me, and I can’t catch up to it even if I truly want to.  In all honesty, I long to catch up to it, to hold and cradle it in my hands like a fussing baby whose cries are like nails on a chalkboard. I would shush it until it dozes off, finally settled and calm so that maybe even just for a moment time may stop and I won’t be turning 18 next year.

I’m not sure if the concept of growing up ever occurred to me. It always seemed like a distant thing when I was younger. It seemed unattainable to my younger self like how I reached for the top shelf on tiptoes, my feet cramping and feeling like prickling needles. It was something I didn’t think I would reach. But it was something that I would long for, like how a child would plead for a candy bar from the store or dream of growing up to be big and strong. 

Whenever I mentioned wanting to grow up my mother would always respond with her laugh, it was a loud and boisterous type of laugh, one that felt like it bounced off the walls and came back at you like a slap across the face. 

“You’re going to regret wanting to grow up so fast. Enjoy life while you’re still young and carefree,” she said. 

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so conflicted if I had taken her words to heart. Do I accept change and grow up? Or do I give in to my desperation and try to live in the past? If only there were an option in between; but if there were everyone would surely choose it, and life wouldn’t progress. We wouldn’t move on. We would be perpetually stuck quite literally in time.  Time is a sticky thing like a piece of half-dried chewed-up gum on the bottom of a school desk that somehow always gets stuck on your shoes, and there’s no shaking it off no matter how much you try. 

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