how are we suppose to fill all of this wild time?

Something that has been very much a pleasure for me these past 8 months of not being in school, was watching people squirm at my inability to make a decision. It was less amusing to watch those who actually know me and care for me wriggle about with displeasure because I’m sure they don’t want to see me end up a sweatytooth madman. But for those that use this grand and difficult topic of what to use my future for, just to shoot around the breeze like a trite, follow-up greeting, I love giving them a shoulder shrug, batting my eyelashes and saying, “Weeeellllll…I don’t know,” as if I don’t think about it every minute. As if their words were the thunder that had finally awoken me from my stupid, youthful slumber.


‘Why do they keep asking the same questions every day?’ I thought. ‘Maybe it’s because they feel very adult with all of their disapproval. Or maybe they are masochists and enjoy the sound of nails on a chalkboard, which, I’m sure, is what it sounds like when I try to explain how they know just as much as I do about my future, which would be…nothing.

…If I know nothing…then why do I keep asking the same questions every day?’

Why do I keep asking the same questions every day? Am I staving off adulthood, where I will not have the luxury for questions, but only the responsibility of answers? What if I don’t have any answers, just more questions?

When humans get older it is harder to heal, not only in body, but in spirit too. When I take the time to heal, or even if I don’t take the time, but rather just take on the mindset to heal, I cannot expect to get anywhere asking the same questions. More than I want everyone else to STOP squirming around me, I want to stop, myself. So instead of asking, “What school?” “What career?” “What adventure?” “What people?” “Which truth?” “What love?”, I have found the question, “What am I suppose to do with all this time?”

And answering THAT has been the very painful part of the last 8 months. That is what people who have lost love do not know. That is what people who have lost their spirit do not know. That is what people who have lost what it means to be found, again, do not know.

It is the essence of humans to suffer greatly. Tragedy riddles us to a place where time isn’t freedom, but shackles. Time is indifferent to the fragile state of a human and to whatever we, as humans, have lost, and what we have found…individually…and collectively. Time distorts pain too, like our old pains were never as bad as our new ones, like how, when we fall off our bikes, we cry for a moment about our skinned knee, and then keep crying because “I cannot be with…” or “I didn’t want to know that…” or “I do not understand.”

How are we suppose to fill all of this wild time? With what meaning? There is not enough control…or power…or force…in the entire world for me to answer that. This is no man’s land. Crazy, uncontrollable, no man’s land.