Time In A Bottle

Someone once told me that we age like all beautiful things in nature. Each new year a blank slate born once the last version of our self settles beneath the surface.

As if we were composed of rings of being, like that of an oak.

As if we were matryoshka dolls of experience. Eighteen tucked inside of nineteen. Nineteen inside of twenty. The rings getting wider as the years run on. Every layer representative of three hundred sixty five days of lessons that led us to the person we wake up as on the morning of our newest existence. The hard pieces buried beneath the soft. The soft ready to be manipulated by the three hundred sixty five days that it will dance through before it is once again reborn.

Waking up to twenty-seven felt just like waking up to the final day of twenty-six. No lessons yet learned to force the feeling of a new frontier. All the heaviness in my chest and tightness in my shoulders carried over the threshold of twenty-six into twenty-seven. All the feelings I went to sleep with met me when I woke. The only difference is that I now had the opportunity to change twenty-seven in a way I could not alter twenty-six. Twenty-six now frozen forever as she was - suspended in time until I need to go back to her for advice or comfort. When nostalgia drags me by the hand back to who we were when we were she. I may not choose to visit twenty-six, but she may opt to visit me in the same way four comes calling from time to time. Urging me to put my head in my mothers lap, hoping she’ll run her fingers through my hair and tell me that everything will all be all right.

Seven is a frequent guest, reminding me to play. To be unashamed of our childlike joy. She encourages me to put dinosaur figurines in my houseplants, and sticker myself with temporary tattoos whenever they are made available. She knows we can’t dance, but she drags us to the dance floor whenever the chance arises because the laugher of our loved ones is worth more than our pride. We see fifteen less. Though when she comes she leaves her mark. She invites us to judge the bodies of women around us when we feel insecure in our own, and scream when what’s needed is silence. We don’t always wish to partake but we have a long-standing problem with saying “no”. The things we’ve learned to say “yes” to are often harmful and I suppose that’s why we ended up with sixteen.

Nineteen tries to help when she can but her approach to problem solving is usually whiskey chased with guilt. She spends a lot of time coaching us through making calls we know we shouldn’t be making, and going places we have no business going. We have a tempestuous relationship and I think it’s driving her further and further away. Twenty only pipes up during meal time, leading us from the pull of the food scale with a gentle reminder of how concerned everyone was when they saw more of our ribs than our smile.

When we’re feeling low twenty-three lends us her stories. Her adventures across oceans and hours under tattoo needles. She is a constant reminder of who we are when we are doing what we love. That even when we are low we have accomplished so much and come so far with nothing propelling us but the desire to be something, someone, noteworthy. But twenty-six. I am afraid to hold hands with twenty-six because the better part of the twenty-five before her lent to her the greatest pieces of themselves only to be given back the worst of her. She held their gifts in her hands and carelessly misplaced them for the sake of sadness. Her long fingers preferred to play with the tattered remnants of past experience. Twenty-six scares me in a similar way to the fear fourteen felt pulling onto the highway for the first time. Instead, this fear does not dissipate as the road wears on. It builds as we consider the looming possibility of slipping back into her, like an unsteady foot off the brake.

Twenty-six did not bat an eye when eighteen came with caution that it wasn’t worth it back then, and it likely isn’t worth it now. Instead she shooed eighteen away before she sat staring at a timer, waiting for the arrival of one pink line or two. A bottle of white wine that she claimed was there to calm her nerves, but was really there to console her knowing that whichever outcome presented itself – she would have to end it.

Eighteen couldn’t be tethered to him, nor could twenty-six despite the love she had for him. She pushed aside that offered warning to feel loss in lieu of nothing.

Thirteen crept in once or twice, lowering her voice and gently closing the door behind her before kneeling beside her bed. She reminded her of how much easier it was to sleep once she asked for the help she needed, but twenty-six turned over in the moonlight and painted her eyes with deep circles instead. When people began leaving to deal with the things that were fractured within themselves sixteen pulled herself out of her rage to tuck a stray strand of hair behind twenty=six's ear and assure her that she did nothing wrong. Twenty-six reeled back from her gentle caress and instead fell into her own obsessive thoughts retracing every movement she may have made in the wrong direction. Through catching breath and hot tears five sputtered through a story about how helpless she felt in watching Dad walk down the street and out of sight every morning, unsure if he would make it home. Twenty-six stood with her back turned, staring out her own window, watching as those around her walked out of frame and into the unknown when she could have just as easily walked beside them.

Despite these gentle lessons twenty-six preferred to fold herself deep into her suffering where not even the soundtrack six gave her could find her.

I am afraid that twenty-six will come searching for my comforting embrace, the only one of us free to move through time unbound by history. Exhausted by the countless nights alone, she may ask me to sing her to sleep the way Mom used to sing to three. Looking for company to watch over her as she fights with her dreams. “Just like me, they long to be close to you”. Consistently fearful that any moment of joy will be interrupted by her icy hands sliding into mine, looking for warmth she couldn’t find on her own.

Twenty-six offers nothing but a warning of what can happen if we at twenty-seven fall into the same traps. Loving the wrong men, working the wrong jobs, trusting the wrong people. Trading our motivation for watching the sun cycle through the afternoon sky from the safety of our bed.

If I let twenty-six cling to me in her insecurity we will have nothing to pass on to twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

Carelessly trading our beautiful rings for time in a bottle.