I saw my 9th grade dorm roommate today. It wasn’t anything special- I see her all the time. We live on the same block. We never really talk. We do The Wave. Not the wave wave, but the City Wave. Those three fingers, waved back and forth really quickly, which implies “Hi, I acknowledge you, but we aren’t going to talk.”
It’s normal. Happens every single day with so many people.
But today I was walking alone and in that moment of “the wave,” I suddenly had this overwhelming feeling of being in the past and the future at the same time.
It was the closest I’ll ever get to time travel this year.
This girl was my roommate five years ago. Five years ago, I was 13, and I was terrified.
If anything was my past, and the past that I grew most from, it was that past.
If there was anything I wanted in that past, it was my future.
Now I am living that 13 year old’s future.
My old roommate made me travel back to that young girls mind and fears. She had hopes and dreams, and could not wait to grow up.
I grew up since then.
I’ve been living so much into the future, that I forgot I am living somebody’s future already. My future. Right now.
That kid I was five years ago is my past. When I was her, I didn’t feel like time was moving anywhere, and now she is my past.
Is this what it means when it says G-d does not exist within the restrictions of time?
We are all continuously living a life of future and past, and we never stop to realize it.
Right now, I am living the past of future me. 30 year old me will remember 18 year old me, and realize that she is living the future Etti, but also the past Etti.
My brain feels so stretched, because it is so hard to focus on where I am now. I am my past. I am my future. I am both at the same time, but right now I need to be doing things so that I can look back into my past, and so that I can look into my future.
If I keep living focused on the future, I’ll lose my past. What is a future without a past, anyway? What am I building off of? An unbalanced foundation that is full of hope, but lacks of concrete action?
That 13 year old me deserves a future that is not focused on the future.
I owe it to her to be the 18 year old I wanted me to be.
I’m not good with details. That’s why the future always looks so much more enticing- there are no details there. It’s vague. I don’t actually know where I’ll be.
The present is full of details. It has minutes and seconds in it, and it takes so long.
It’s so much easier to focus on the future, to live in the future.
But it’s also dangerous.
But, every time I think about that poor thirteen year old Me who is having her future wasted because eighteen year old me just can’t wait to be five years older…that makes me frustrated with myself.
Live in the moment. I have to live life for what I have now. Then I’ll have a past. I’ll always have a future.
Seeing my roommate made me remember a past that I wasn’t happy in. In that past, I would have given anything to be in this future.
I’m here now. I owe it to me to live in the present.
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