The Magic of Time

Chapter One

RIVER

Sometimes when I'm laying in bed at night, I think about all of the things in life that I still haven't done. The things that I still haven't seen, or experienced. All of the people that I've yet to meet, or have conversations with about things that I could or could not care less about. I think about how I'm twenty-three, and I'm not getting any younger. I think about my family, and how much I miss them. The many things that pop into my head when I should be sleeping. And realizing that I have no control over time. I have no control over many things in my own life.

Think about your day. What do you do in one day? For me, I wake up, go to the bathroom, shower, brush my teeth, get dressed, grab my bag, and I go to school until my classes end. Depending on the day, I'll work or I'll sleep in. I'll have lunch, some type of sandwich. Or whatever I can get my hands on at work. And then, I go home, I brush my teeth once again, I wash my face, and I get into bed after changing into some random t-shirt and shorts. And then it's a repeat. Sometimes, I'll see my friends, or I'll go shopping, or to eat, or I'll do something random. But it's almost the same exact thing every single day. Wash, rinse, repeat. But when does time stop? When do any of us get an actual break? When do we get time to breathe, to process. I've come to the conclusion that there is no time. You only get so little of the millions of trillions of amount of time that this lifetime hands you, and there's either a routine, or you're lucky and you're living some spontaneous life.

I can't help but wonder what time looks like to others. To those around me. They say time is valuable, but how much does one minute of your own time cost? For me, I'd say a dollar. For a minute of my mothers time, I'd pay five million dollars. For a minute of the presidents time, I'd pay about five. It all comes down to whose time you're willing to pay for.

Since I was little, I haven't had the best relationship with time. Maybe I'd been spending it wrong. But how does one spend time wrong? Who is that up to? Time determines so much of your life, that before you can even blink, you've moved out and are paying seventeen hundred dollars per month for a six hundred square foot studio apartment on the wrong side of town. In a way, I have a love hate relationship with time.

They say that time heals, but no one can ever give an exact timeframe on how long the healing takes. This is because it's not the time that's healing, it's you that's healing. Every breakup that I've ever been through has proven to me that time, in fact, does not heal. I, however, do heal.