Fog and Time

Sometimes I do feel like there's a fog that won't dissipate. Sometimes remembering what happened yesterday, or remembering specific details about last week, is difficult. There is a difficulty in separating time and space when everything is moving so quickly. There are times when doing nothing makes time stretch out, and times when a whirlwind of a day, or a week, feels like it goes by in a blink. Time can mush into indiscriminate clumps.

I asked my therapist why, now that I am a fully-functioning adult (on the outside, at least), a month can go by feeling like it existed in the span of a weekend. I explained to her that when I was younger, anticipating a vacation or a break and counting down the days felt instead like counting down the years. Why was that? I asked. Why was I so excited for something that seemed so far away, and then when it finally happened, felt like it lasted two weeks instead of one? Why was I so focused on time back then, whereas now I wish I wasn't? She put it very succintly, and said: it's because you have more to do.

More to do? That sounds about right. My whole life revolves around doing, and with doing comes time. Time to get up, time to shower, time to eat, time to leave the house and drive to work, time to meet for dinner, time to sleep. Time to think about how many more days until the weekend. Time to get up early enough so that I can enjoy the day, but not too early so that I can feel victorious about sleeping in. Time to see friends, but too much time because I need some for myself.

And then, once I've compartmentalized all this time, what's left?

After thinking so much about time, there's none left. After thinking so much about how to section my life, and prioritize, and follow the routines of the clock, reflecting on what was becomes reflecting on what came and went. It sped away so quickly that reflecting, and remembering, and enjoying anything about what I've just lived through, even in a regular working week, is blurred out.

Anticipating time makes it run away too quickly. How can I live in the moment if I am always thinking ahead to the next tick of the clock? Because everything is on a foward trajectory, trying to reverse and look in the rearview mirror comes up blank. Not because I can't remember anything - of course I can remember what I did, or where I went, or who I saw - but because it's more black and white than color. By black and white I mean greyed out, like I can only close my eyes and see flickers. I can remember where I went, and who I saw, and I can feel the joy or the excitement from that, but also grief, because it came and went and now it's gone.

Obviously, all things come to an end. That is a given, and always has been. But there's a difference between coming to an end, and coming to a close. Everything seems to close now, to make space for the next span of time that is forced to move in. Time is definite, but amorphous. Becuase of all the anticipation, and looking ahead, and planning, the time that's passed dulls away. It's not gone, of course, it's still there, it still exists, but it exists in a past that was so concious of it coming that once it came and went, it had to make space for more time, and therefore faded into insignificance.

Do you feel the fog? Do you feel the passage of time like a fear, not of things ending, but a fear of losing what you did, and where you were, and what you are? How can we live in the moment if the moment is always ahead of us, until it's not, until it's behind us, and greyed out, and gone? Gone in the past, where we can still remember it, but through a fog, because we spent so much time waiting for the moment that once it came and went, we forgot where and when and how and why we waited?