Time.
It has strict rules. Twenty-four hours in a day. Sixty minutes in an hour. It is unyielding, robotic, steadfast. It stops and waits for no one.
These last two years have blurred seemingly into one. Logically I can count days, place memories, and account for the full rotation of two trips around the sun. But there are cracks in the logbook, and here is where I find time can expand and contract, like water freezing, then thawing.
Emotion is the force of nature on time. Waiting can cause minutes to drag. Loneliness is the dark hole between each second-hand moving. Grief is just the divide of before and then after. Contentment is the satisfaction of an hour passing. And when you are happy, the carefree let go of the acknowledgment of time’s existence. Love is the wild card in the bunch. It has the power to teach us the value of a moment, send us to the moon or crush us to pieces.
I have embraced the myriad of feelings listed above and the ones in between, like many of us last year. It is often in the darkest of hours, counting sleepy breathing between my heartbeats, that I can lay them out and examine them.
Already we are closing in on almost half the new year. There are 225 days left, and I hope time expands more this year with love for you than contracts.
- Sleepyeyes
