What is time?
Here we come to the end of 2007, and I don’t know that I could be less interested. New Year has always been a non-holiday for me, always a let-down, because nothing miraculous ever happens when you put up that new calendar. You find that the winter day you’re facing on January 1st looks an awful lot like the winter day you faced the day before, for better or worse.
Last year, this day was fraught with emotional peril, because I didn’t want to step into a year that had not seen his handsome face. I didn’t want the too-long future without him to begin in any official way, despite knowing that the future without him began the moment I received the call from his sister confirming what I already knew in my deepest heart to be true. I pitied 2007 because it would not know him, and he was one hell of an excellent human being. I pitied myself because I did know him, and love him, and would miss him like hell.
I was not wrong.
Now I have lived through this year, and as I come to the end of it, my overriding thought in this moment is: So what? I still miss him like hell, and the days pass as they will. In some I find moments of joy; in others, whole stretches of hours of contentment, and I count myself lucky for it. Some days are a slog through heavy rain, and I just try to get by, reminding myself that that is all any of us can do, and that these rainy days come to all. I am not special, and I take a small amount of comfort in the thought that it’s not personal. Some days I can look around me, feel all my sadness and happiness, all my losses and riches at once and say, “If this is as good as it’s going to get for the rest of my life, I think I can live with this.” Other days, I think, “It’s got to get better. It has to.” I never know if that is hope or white-knuckle fear.
I don’t know where the year went, where the last year and a half went. I have written often about the fact that sensible, linear time stopped for me the day A died, and I have not managed to find it again. Perhaps it is not necessary for me, even if it is for those around me. I have always had a relaxed relationship with time. Much like Gandalf and other wizards, I arrive neither early nor late; I arrive exactly when I mean to. But is more than that now; watches and calendars are merely interesting temporal trivia, and I no longer tick in time with them.
I remember clearly conversations that he and I had over 3 years ago. I remember the conversations we had before the unexpected end came as “recent,” though he and I haven’t actually spoken in almost a year and a half. I know that I have traveled emotional light years in the last 17.5 months; I know I have—I feel the wear and tear of travel on my mind, body, and soul. And yet I am never more than a breath away from the day I found out I’d lost him. Time seems to expand and contract in three dimensions for me these days; time breathes.
People say you cannot live in the past, and that you cannot live for the future, and that now is all we have. I’m living proof that it’s not true; I live constantly in the past, present, and future, simultaneously. I cannot tell you how I do it, but here I am, and I do not imagine that I’m alone in this timeless space. If it is true that time is a construct of a material world, and that the only thing that separates us is space and perception, and not time at all, then the fact that time eludes my grasp now may only mean that I am now grasping a bigger reality, or at least the hairs on the end of its tail.
I often wonder if such thoughts mean I have grown wise, or just desperate for meaning, desperate enough to grant myself degrees from a cosmic schoolroom whose doorstep I’ve not even come close to darkening. I wouldn’t mind a hint, one way or the other.
Is there anything worse than not knowing? The bliss of ignorance, at least for me, is negligible at best. I think of the ignorance I felt when I could not reach him, and feared the worst, but did not know. There was no bliss in that. It was a frantic, frightened ignorance, when worst-case scenarios swirled in my head, circling around the very worst, which turned out to be true. In that case, absolute knowledge was worse, but not by far; I was already so tortured it was merely a half-step off the edge into the abyss.
As 2008 dawns, I can tell you that I am emotionally stronger than a year ago, and physically weaker. I have learned much and am sure of very little. I no longer wish I were dead, but am not quite sure how to enjoy this life I have come back to. Welcome to my dichotomy. May the coming year bring us more healing, less hurt, and tireless hope.