When you’re younger, you want to get older. Old enough to be able to buy your own beautiful plastic toys. Old enough to be able to buy your own booze and cigarettes. Old enough to be able to go on dates, go out, and live on your own. And then the clock starts ticking.
Time, then, is just another thing that slowly seems to creep by. A summer lasts forever and is full of fun and adventures. And you can still remember what happened each year. The nightlife goes on forever, and after-parties merge effortlessly with studying and work. No one notices you’re very hungover in a call center with your sunglasses on after all. But oops, you still get an official warning from your boss. You never liked that job anyway, and you quit. Easy. Friendships are forever, and every relationship is with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Everything is hopeful, and the opportunities are endless.
And then suddenly that day comes when time finally seems to catch up with you. It hits you like a truck. Friendships end because you grow apart, relationships break up, and loneliness engulfs you with a fear of not being able to do it again. Opening yourself up again and again. So people can get to know you and embrace you. It’s starting to feel like a task bigger than life. Summer also turns out to not be as endless as it used to be. And those two weeks of vacation rarely seem to energize you, so you dive back into work exhausted.
You are in a relationship that is perfectly fine, simple, and easy. You live in a decent little house in the city where you once moved to in order to study and explore. Where you once went out every weekend with friends you rarely see anymore. You have a regular job that pays a regular wage. Not what you studied for, which turned out not to be so much fun after all. But it works, and everything seems to hold up. Who cares if you’re a slave to retail and carry on with your days off? You go on vacation a few times a year to escape the repetition of work and life. But it all feels like a bit of a sad show, doesn’t it?
You try to go back to a time when time didn’t seem to pass you by. But you can’t drink as much as you used to, and to be fair, you don’t really want to either. You’re too sober for the afterparty and realize what a sad mess it really is in the daylight. And in the afternoon you wake up with a hangover that leaves you writing depressing stories like this. Now you don’t even have enough time for your laundry to dry. You should probably buy a dryer in six months. And what about that driving licence?
Time has finally caught up with you and is knocking on your door like a Jehovah’s Witness. Will they bring the word of elapsed time? Let’s put it into perspective for a moment. Think of all the things that time has done for you. The promise that everything would heal with time. All the moments that have become memories that you can still remember without having written them down. Everything you know and can do now. All the things you bought that made your life easier as an adult. How your body automatically saves you from going too far by causing your backache. You’re not there yet; you’re halfway there. Or maybe not even halfway yet, but somewhere in between. Just be happy you are no longer 21 anymore. Remember what a disaster that was?
Time is relative. And what does it all matter anyway? One day I will welcome the end of my time and rest timelessly and endlessly. And until then, time is just time.
Martijn Winkel 