Future Fearing.

We have a strange relationship, and she has all the control.

She has the benefit of experience, of age, of memory; all I have is this time now, the present.

We watch each other from where we sit, and I can’t imagine what she looks like.

Does she look a little bit like me? Has she kept her hair short, or has she unearthed the patience in herself, somehow, and grown it long? Has she gotten taller? Does she look more mature? If I looked, could I see it in her face? That difference?

My wondering never does me any good.

She’s never anything more than a stranger.

A stranger. It’s never a blanket statement, like that. She has facets, she has depth, she’s a three dimensional character, like me.

She is me. Only, after Time.

And so she changes.

Sometimes I imagine that she’s some kind of benign presence, perfect and untouchable. Time has left no scars on her, has only molded and cast her into the person I and everyone else ever wanted her to be. When I see her like that, in my mind’s eye, I’m jealous, and I wonder what it will take, exactly.

I think: I can’t wait.

Other times, I’m bitter.

Other times, she scares me.

She becomes something darker, something less like a person, and more like a monster. Those times it doesn’t matter to me how good she is, or what she’s done, or who loves her.

She’s a monster, and she will eat me.

It will be a gradual process, and it won’t hurt– or will it?– but nothing will change the fact that she will swallow me whole and I will be gone.

Those times I never want to grow older, ever.

I never want to meet her.

I hate her, because I am this girl, now, and she is that woman, then, and the two will not meet. The two will combine, and one will fade– but the two will never, ever meet.

And that makes me bitter. It makes me sad, this knowing that I’ll die a sort of weird memory-death, and don’t tell me that I’m being melodramatic, because I know how it is.

Looking back, I imagine splitting everyone I am into the seconds during which they lived. Separated by choices, separated by experience, separated by time– years, days, seconds– who cares?

There are thousands of girls, each a second older than the last, each with a second’s advantage over the other, and we’ve all swallowed each other mercilessly, without thinking about it at all. The only truly innocent one was the one that lived at the beginning, at the first breath of life.

There was no death, only that first second–

And then– crack!– the moment passed, and we began to fall.

But I imagine them. I line them up in my mind, and I wonder what they would think about me if they saw me. Would they wonder where my toys went? When I decided that my sister was my best friend? When I fell in love? When I began to believe that I had to spend an hour getting ready in the morning? When I left my hometown and all it stood for behind? Hell, when I left them–myself–behind? Would I apologize to them for my betrayal?

And then– should I apologize? Is this some ridiculous teenage guilt-trip I’m putting myself through for no reason? This– this is a part of life. Her, sitting however she sits in the future, and me, sitting slouched on the bed, hunched over the computer– it’s a part of life, isn’t it?

And the fear– the fear of losing myself, the fear of losing these ideals, the fear of forgetting who I am now– that must be natural, too.

But I hate that she has the advantage. I hate that she has the comfort of the future, the benefit of nostalgia, when all I have is the fear. The not knowing.

And then suddenly I wonder who exactly it is that I’m hating.

Blink– and she’ll be gone.

She must be scared, too.