Time Is Passing

My notebook is running out of pages. While my diaries usually span a year, if not more, this dark blue leather notebook is barely going to last me until the end of June. I flipped to the first page in horror, to see that my entries began within the four walls of this apartment and are destined to end within the same four walls. Nothing has happened. And so, on a whim, I fished another two notebooks out of my drawer and decided to title them in permanent marker. 2018 I wrote on the plain black notebook, followed cheesily by consisting the summer I moved out of home and my first year of university - the transition from a high schooler to a girl living in the real world. Then, 2019 I wrote on the soft brown notebook covered in golden outlines of woodland animals, with another corny title: consisting an insecure girl finding her place amongst the people around her.

I've noticed a running theme in the material I've been consuming - of time passing in phases, in people coming in and out, in changing philosophies and careers and passions.

I spent the last two days bingeing that new romantic comedy series starring Anna Kendrick, Love Life. While the show is light-hearted - another one of those meaningless stories about a twenty-something girl living her life in New York City - its timeline spans almost a decade. I follow as she meets her first real boyfriend, gets married and divorced, becomes a mother, and finally finds herself with the job she's always wanted. I watch as her friends end up in their various places, in relationships we never predicted, with problems that only show their heads with time. And I watch as her priorities change, as she matures and learns to validate herself.

I spent the last month reading Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, following four boys from their time as roommates in college, through their various relationships, through their various careers, until their deaths. I watch as the people in their world bottleneck, their circle getting smaller and smaller, and the different ways they deal with this. Just yesterday a friend messaged "as you grow and mature in life, I think you discover more and more what kind of people you like, and by virtue your friends get fewer and fewer," to which I replied that the idea makes me sad. 

As I keep reading, each boy's philosophy of life changes, and time seems to pass like water - so naturally, so tragically, until I'm at the end and the journey is breathtakingly over.

During quarantine I've been reading personal essays, scouring sites like Nearness Project, Uniquely Aligned and BobbleHaus, perhaps searching for some form of individual understanding in these disengaged times. Over the past few months I've read many essays speaking of the 'lack of control' the corona virus has sprung onto peoples' lives, and the anxiety that stems as a result. While I appreciated authors bearing their emotions and souls onto the page, I can't say I particularly related. What did they mean a 'lack of control'?

Today though, I came to the realisation that yes, the corona virus has left me in an ultimately uncontrollable situation. I would never have fathomed that I would be spending 6 months with no real structure to my life, with nowhere to formally be besides this apartment. Obviously the virus has left me in its fateful wake just like the rest of us. But no, I never felt anxiety or anything but a complete, delusional control. I've realised that delusional optimism just seems to be my coping mechanism, my mind stubbornly unshakeable, chanting "You are doing just fine."

And with this understanding that the virus has in fact altered my life in ways I would not have personally chosen for myself, my mind is clinging to this idea of life moving in phases - unpredictable and out of our control whether we like it or not. And so, on my blue notebook that is running out of pages, I wrote 2020 - the corona virus. a time of contemplation. In the grand scheme of things, this 6 months is another phase, one in which we have been blessed with much needed quiet and self reflection. And around us, the world is contemplating too - as people learn to be with their families, be with themselves, tune into injustices external to themselves during this lull in their lives, and simply experiment with a different way of living.

And while this has been an important phase,

life will then return to normal, and this phase will be over and a new one will begin.

Love,

M