Monday, October 14, 2013

About time.

Sometimes, quite suddenly, things that have previously been totally familiar and obvious to me become weird. Unfamiliar and odd.

During recovery that happened with reading. I'd never stopped to think about the words on a page before, they just are. But suddenly they seemed vulnerable and unanchored, like nothing was holding them in place. And although they were floating in the right position just now... what? I'm not sure what to be honest. An unarticulated threat.

It was unnerving and made me quite anxious. I didn't read a book for a long time and then at some point it became ok again. Words on pages just are again.

Now it's about time. Time only goes one way. That is such an obvious feature of time that it doesn't need stating, but it suddenly seems all at odds.

I met someone today who is going through what I went through exactly a year ago. She is the same age that I was and at the same stage in her life. She has the same worries that I did. All those things I worried about! What a waste of worry. 

It got me thinking. As she heads into surgery tomorrow, I will be boarding a plane on the holiday of my lifetime. With Alfred. It's certainly an image that would never have seemed possible this time last year. 

There was no way for me to know what would happen to me next or how I would recover from the surgery. And I would still have the same worries if I did it all over again. But from where I am now it seems like a colossal waste. Of energy and time. How is it possible that I didn't know it would all turn out ok? Brilliant in fact. 

A while ago I made a conscious effort not to worry about things so much. There's nothing wrong with preparing for the worst but once prepared, no amount of worrying can help. It's not that easy though, I'm a worrier at heart. 

But back to time. I can't get my head around the weirdness of being able to look back and analyse, but not forward. Time is so weird and unstoppable. Elastic but relentless. 

It's like being on a conveyor belt, with a curtain of fog in front of your nose. You can't stop moving towards whatever is in store for you. Bit of a wobble? Peak or trough? No idea. All the twists and turns of your history are mapped out in detail, but really I just want a sneaky peak at whatever's behind the curtain. 




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