Time is Everything....; Time is Nothing!

The concept of time..., where did it come from? Which idiot thought of it. What is time anyways? Is it the long hours that never seem to pass quickly enough at work? Or is it the crawling minutes when I wait for someone outside their house? Maybe it's the 'time' that is never enough for people. Time gone too fast - youth and beauty that seemed endless at one point, is now slowly but decidedly fading with each ticks and tocks of the old clock.

I am going to turn 27 this year. TWENTY SEVEN. That's 9909 days. 237, 816 hours. All gone by. Never to come back again. Never. Jousa! Where have all the years gone? I will tell you the best years of my life; 1988-1992, 1994, 1998-99, 2000, 2005. I cant' remember the early years. I have trouble even remembering what I did last week, or who I met, so to recall times in my early years is like trying to milk alcohol out of a cow! I am sure I had the best times of my life before 1988. That's when I had grandparents, cows, dogs, and a front lawn to play all day. Certainly I would have laughed with no hint of suppression. Unlike my laugh today. It's tainted with knowledge. Knowledge that teaches you with every tragedy, that sometimes when you laugh, you will have to cry too....

That's why I never laugh too loudly or freely. If I did, I make certain for penance. It's not fair I tell myself sometimes. Why is there a dark shadow over my being, in my conscious, in the words that I speak, in the thoughts I pore, like it has seeped deep within my marrow. Why can't I be free ....like the rest of them....then I ask myself...are they? Are they free? How could I possibly know. For all I gather, they are seeing me laugh freely. People used to say I am lucky. I never understood why. Now that they know, they won't repeat the same mistake again. At least I hope not. I have changed, my life has changed, .....time has changed.

Can I bead the happy years on a string and leave the rest? How many years will I miss out. How many hours. What will be the final count. Then how old will I really be.