The Part Where I Learned About Time

After high school graduation before I left for BYU, Doricha and I had three months left.  Our days were numbered and we knew it.  When we got together, we knew that it would end.  We acknowledged and accepted that.  When we got together, we said that hanging on to high school relationships in college is a bad idea.  We knew that.  And we agreed that in August we would go our separate ways.

That summer was beautiful.  We grew in love and were attached at the hip.  I spent nearly every waking moment either talking to her or being with her.  I worked at a movie theatre and we saw free movies.  We saw much more of some of those movies than others.  I could not tell you now what actually happens in Robin Hood (the Russell Crowe one).

But our joy was underscored by the constant ticking of the clock.

I so desperately just wanted the moments to be longer.  I wanted time to stop.  I wanted that summer to last forever.  There was, it's true, a small part of me that was okay with time passing.  I was looking forward to going to college just like any kid would.  There was a small part of me that wanted the time to just pass quickly so I could get on with things.  But the vast vast majority of me wanted to stop time and stay in that happy paradise forever.

It didn't stop, though.

Surprise.

And again, I find myself making wishes with my time.  I'm preparing to leave BYU forever.  A small part of me just wants it to slow down and stop.  I will miss my newfound friends and my small niche I've begun to dig out here.

But most of me just wants the time to pass as quickly as possible.  I want to be home.  I want to see my brothers and sister and my parents.  I want to get started actually working on my major at my new school.  But most of all I want to see Doricha again.

It has been such a long four months.  Time cannot pass fast enough when I think of how soon I'll be able to see her again.

The book Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman is a fictional discussion, vignettes, on different ways that time might move.  One of them proposes "a place where time stands still.  As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly...  [T]his is the center of time.  From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles—at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed at greater diameters...  [A]t the place where time stands still, one sees parents clutching their children, in a frozen embrace that will never let go... [They] move, but at the pace of glaciers" (70-73).

I feel like that lately.  The closer I get to it, the slower I'm moving.

But that's just how I feel.  If I've learned anything about time in the last year, it's that time moves always at the same pace.  Whether you wish it would go faster or slower, it pays you no heed and carries on at the same ever-maddening pace.