Yesterday, I turned 45. No fanfare, no balloons, no new gray hairs (that I noticed). Just the flip of a calendar day that marked the start of my 45th year on this big spinning ball… I used to love aging. When my life seemed somewhat within my control, and I had goals on the horizon. Aging felt like a gift; a display of notches in my belt of hard-won wisdom and victories. But, since I’ve been sick, aging worries me. 

No matter how hard I try, I can’t help seeing time as running away from me instead of running with me. I once saw my life as time well spent. Even when that time was merely reading a book, singing karaoke with strangers, or lying in a loved one’s arms. Time was my friend then; we were one, working in tandem. But now it loudly ticks away as it marks the painfully slow healing of a body that somehow feels detached from both time and me. 

I am no longer present in my own life… not fully. I’m somewhere trapped behind achy, weak muscles and diseased lungs, watching everything move much faster than my increasing brain fog can keep up with. And that’s it, isn’t it?… I can’t keep up. This world isn’t set up for the sick and slow. There are no easily accessible “safe spaces” where one can stop the constant flow of accountability to mend without guilt. No, that big ball keeps spinning, even when we don’t have the strength to spin along with it. Which would be frightening, but really, it means that we still have time. 

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Time by Pink Floyd...

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
Sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say