There was a girl. Relatively attractive. Some said beautiful. From time to time she agreed, but most often saw herself as plain looking. It didn’t matter. Nothing really did. One day, somewhere along her timeline, she realized that time had slipped by. Ever so sneakily, ever so inconspicuously, time had slithered by undetected. No one else seemed to notice it, but things were different now. The children she used to babysit where in college. Her once vibrant relatives were withering away. Her childhood pets were long dead. Where was her horse, Classy? Yes, long dead. What about the land her horses had lived on outside of her house? Yes, covered with wild bushes. What had happened to her best friend with whom she had once played barbies? Yes, married. Why were many of the kids she went to school with so tall? Why did many of them have children? Finished college? She felt she hadn’t even finished highschool yet. Where had the years gone? How had they managed to slip away?
When she was a child the summer holidays had seemed a lifetime. Now a week felt like a day, a week a month. So what if she at last met someone who she loved? How many years until she would bury him? There was no such thing as being together forever. How many years until they would grow fat and ugly?
Would it be only a blink of an eye before she would look back at the selfies she had taken of herself today, with all of the faults she currently saw, and long for this youthful beauty? Time would run away with them. Say that time flew on by and she married this man who she loved. The years would sail on by. They would have a beautiful family and a beautiful pristine house. Years of sunshine and love. But their children would grow up and move out. Eventually they would lose their mobility and their their mental faculties and the beautiful pristine house of that Golden Age would pass to new owners. The end of a saga. The corners where so many resplendent memories took place would grow shadowy, and the memories would dim. And finally, one true love would lose the other and then die alone. Alas, this is all there is to the perfect life.
She never much enjoyed things or looked forward to them, nor dreaded them, for she knew they would pass. Every moment of happiness and love would pass. So too every moment of suffering and heartache. They were all meaningless, ultimately. Each moment was just a grain of sand in an hourglass that was steadily emptying and would be annihilated when it emptied. Killing oneself right away was an option, but playing the game to the end often proved interesting and surprising. That’s how she saw things.
Somehow she always knew that time would steal away her happiness. That knowledge often prevented her from enjoying the time she had had. When her parents bought her a puppy, days later they were shocked to see her crying. When asked why, she replied “this puppy is going to be the greatest friend I will ever have. I will love her more than anything, and then watch her die.” And so it went…
She would often be kept awake at night, choking on tears, shivering in the knowledge of the impending doom and tragedy that time necessitated. Her parents were once roused from their sleep by her sighs and asked why she cried. She told them “because I love you, and I will have to bury you. And then I’ll be all alone. How ever will I bear it?” And what words of comfort could one ever give to such a child who believed neither in spirits nor angels? What a loathsome creature was the god who would create a deadly curse like time. No, God doesn’t give and take, Time does.
