I’ve always been scared of growing old, always have been wary of time. My eyes have found themselves entranced by each tick of the clock, not necessarily for the love watching the hours pass by, but for the sole of purpose knowing the minute chaos will ensure. I avert my eyes, too frightened of losing my mind.

The mere concept scares me. It’s the most frightening social construct because it’s only as real as we let it and the thing is, our minds have been conditioned to count each sunrise and sunset, tick off each minute that blur numbers into twenty-four hours since the very beginning.

I see time take its hands every single day and color the roots of my mom’s hair gray, watch it litter my dad’s hands with lines and callouses from seconds bleeding into years. I let it add tick marks on my wall for every day up to 365 days as a constant, unending reminder of all the what could’ve been and what if’s. It scares me to the point that I’d rather have birthdays blur into every day to avoid the idea of having numbers determine the time I’ve spent living (or am I just existing?). It scares me because the realization hits me that as I grow older, so are my parents. I’ve never known a world without them and I don’t ever want to know a world without them.

Time, in all its entirety, takes and takes and takes; time is selfish, it is without regret or remorse.

I’ve seen time rob me of my loved ones, seen it transform into flashbacks of the past, of the better days, and it always leaves me wondering where it all went, where it could’ve gone.

The thing is, we never really know when the last time is so we end up regretting everything we didn’t do. We wake up one day not knowing that yesterday marked the last time we’ll ever see somebody or the very last afternoon we’ll ever get to go out to play in the playground and scrape our knees red.

We lose our innocence to the reality of it all.

It’s breathtaking in the worst possible way and it’s hard to accept, much less realize, that nothing in a life as free as this will ever belong to us.

Everything and everyone we’ve ever really known is temporary, just waiting for their turn to take their time card and clock out. We always think we have enough until it’s too late. It goes away too fast, too soon and our fingertips are always left reaching out for more.

Time, I’ve come to learn, is always in a hurry, as if it’s late for something. As I call its name out in the wind, I stretch my legs into a desperate sprint trying to catch even just its shadow but all I’m met with is an empty echo of my own voice ricocheting.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

I've been told that time is money so why is it that the more I spend on it, I'm the one that's left just a little bit emptier.