Flickers

It's About Time

Time is a sinister snake that coils slowly around its victims and squeezes until it crushes their bones and punctures their lungs. A raging beast that claws away at your skin, leaving scars that can never be healed, pulling you so tightly towards death that when it finally lets go, your skin droops and sags. Time is unkind, cruel and vicious. It spares no one, it grips from the moment we breath our first breathe and stops only when we cease to exist. Time is relentless, a force to accept rather than fight.

So why do we rage a silent war against it? We conform to the strict schedules and the ticking deadlines, but we fight back with 'anti-aging' creams and pills that make us live just that little bit longer. Such products anger time, and so it fights back harder and more vicious, for there is no escape. And how funny it must seem to such a beast, for we believe that we are invincible to such pain, until we see the first greying hair or the first wrinkle etched into our skin-because we are all running out of time.

Like a sand timer, each day a tiny grain of sand falls and it is one day less that we have alive. We know this, yet we choose to ignore, choose to pretend that we have plenty of time. And it is those that are oblivious that fall victim to time too soon, although time is never early nor late. It is those that are taken suddenly, in an accident or from a deadly disease, falling victim to the beast that will eventually destroy us all.

But I did not want to be ruled by time, I did not want to have my life given or taken so suddenly. I wanted to die on my own accord, and so I believed that I could take my life into my own hands. I believed that I could surprise time by plunging a knife into my stomach, twisting it to undo the hands of the clock I was so afraid of. But it was a choice I was happy to make, for I was free of the beast, and so I smiled as my life came to an end. I had done it; I had finally beaten time. No more was I shackled against my will! I would not be dragged or scratched or worn or crushed by time for I was free and I was happy. It's about time we were all set free.