The elderly say I am too young to feel this way:
Time is leaving me behind.
My sprint has crawled to a stand still;
I'd have to admit I'm not fine.
That grandiose life fabled?
I lived it, I felt it, I'd seen it—
Had it left me sooner...
It had though, I still need it.
It fell out of my grasp, because, I was tired—
Some would equate that to laziness.
And they could be right...
Time doesn't have needs, sadly, I do.
I couldn't keep up with the constant, concentrated calculations.
The endless, exhausting recurring exploits required of myself to maintain it.
Time didn't accommodate for my respite—
It couldn't have, despite the naive beliefs of my younger self.
Time felt so much more forgiving when everything was new.
It amazed me too, days felt like they lasted forever.
It was very clever, yet cruel of my mind to trick me into believing such a fantasy.
Where I could rest easy, knowing I had time left to use.
"No need to fear, you can accomplish your goals,
You can relax just a bit longer,
There is no need to wonder,
Simply don't ponder on how much is left."
This false dialogue inside me led to stagnation.
It was devastating to my progression.
My motivation had gone into a recession—
Only it didn't come back up, linearly.
High to low, low to lower, lower to highest.
Even when it decided the time was nigh,
Rearing it's head wouldn't last very long.
It was gone soon as it had arrived.
This wasn't ideal, I was last place in a race of two—
Separated by 50 metres and still losing speed.
Time was leaving me behind.
The gap between us was getting larger.
I didn't know how to fix my affliction...
An inability to do anything meaningful continually,
That had killed an semblance of a goal I might of had prior—
It had ceased my goal making entirely as of present.
"Tell me now!"
I could scream into the sky.
There would never be a response.
At least not that I suspected or wanted.
It wasn't verbal, no godlike entity descended to talk—
Not like there was much to talk about worth it to traverse that hurdle.
I finally understood, I suppose.
There were no blessings for those who stood still.
If time has left you,
Are you still alive,
Do you strive to accomplish anything?
Unless you take a dive into the darkness,
Are you worthy of being handed a ray of light?
I took a plunge...
Of which wasn't fungible,
At least outright
Slowly Time began to slow its pace,
Steadily the distance began to close.
Submerged in a the darkness,
enveloped in freezing milky liquid
Gasping for air, yet unable to breathe
Grasping for a chance at victory,
Sight was fading from my eyes,
Indescribable, untreatable;
Agonizingly omnipresent, inexplicably made pain,
The kind that intermingled with one's soul
To devour it completely—only to chew slowly and spit it back out:
Holding you back, squeezing tightly to extinguish your aspirations,
Shortening your life, because you know you don't deserve it.
I now understand that this is living,
A constant subversion of your expectations,
Fighting for a distance goal which will be forever elusive.
Praying for a finale to a movement with an unknown number of measures once you arrive at the melody.
The ray I'd had hoped for shone down on me—
Time was beside me once again—
It wasn't going to be easy,
but I will keep moving,
Never will it be too far out of reach.
May a ray of light shine down on you.
Copyright 2024 Christian Anderson. All Rights Reserved.