And a Tale of the Inevitable Passage of Time

It’s 12:04 AM on the 30th of January in the year 2024.

It’s been years since my last entry here.

This log has been a testament to the passage of time…

Of the time spent away invested in some spaces of myself outwardly…
Of the time spent invested to process and endure the various nuances of the passage of time in hopes of…

Well, one might hope to say that it would be to heal and get more ok with things. While that has happened, it also hasn’t entirely. It’s a bit about the path of grief. It’s absolutely not a given how it will reveal itself even years later. It’s a series of stories that I’ll unpack more of in time if I am granted the opportunity to be able to do it while time inevitably passes. I don’t know if I will though. It’s even more so why these stories need to be told here. Who knows when the opportunity of time will no longer be here to question?


Truth be told, I’ve been meaning to come back to doing these posts regularly, but a lot of what has transpired has been far too painful to put to pen. My focus has been on the immediate needs of surviving while experiencing waves of hope, complex life events, loss, love, levity, and, let’s just say, some of the less “ideal” revelations that happen with the inevitable passage of this debated topic of time.


Work has had its joyful moments, as you can see from my portfolio. That is its own thing enmeshed with stories. I’m both thrilled with my progress and deeply saddened. The path toward those joyful moments was often the exact opposite of joy. Getting there cost so much that words cannot fully do it justice.


I should write another post unpacking that. Another time, perhaps.


I digress.

I made a decision at the end of last year that I would come back to writing missives here. My time has been generally focused on the day-to-day matters of trying to survive the capitalist machine that feeds on us all. Rationalizing taking the time to write for oneself without benefiting things like putting a roof over one’s head or feeding oneself has been rough.  Doing this to get bills paid is one thing, but daring to treat oneself to moments of doing the work one does to make ends meet to be free is a freedom in itself. It shouldn’t feel revolutionary to do this.

Consider this my act of allowing myself to be revolutionary in my way, even if that act isn’t revolutionary to some standards.


But back to the inevitable passage of time-

A death came about recently. It was my cousin (in the cover image of this post) who was born the same year as I was and the same age as I am currently) when she died. In a different life, in a different time, there was a connection there. We had been super close when we were younger. We’d shared a lot- dreams, clothes, silliness.

But as I looked even for the photos in my possession, it was clear that those things were long gone already. There were barely any good final memories of her. She hadn’t existed in the way she once had for a long time. It brought forward yet again a reminder of how time passes and how our choices of inward or outward investment are felt.

Katie’s death came about unexpectedly, even if I had partially sadly anticipated that it might if some things didn’t change.

It is a tale where I wish things were different.
I wish I were different.
I wanted so much to be wrong.
I wanted things to be better.
I wish I had been better to her.
I wish she had been better to me.
I failed.
There isn’t another chance to change it.
I have only myself to blame for this.

Time passed regardless of how we were to one another. It was inevitable for the good, the bad, and the end of a story. Her chapter is over now. I wish it weren’t, even if we did not get along at the end of her life.

When I got the news that she’d passed, it brought up a lot of dust. The family dust, especially on that side of the family, doesn’t get attended to that often.  If it does, I’d be the last to hear about it. Over the years, I’ve made distance with a lot of that. I’d come to peace with some of it. I haven’t felt welcomed there in several ways, even in the days when my cousin Katie and I had been close.

It was actually quite amazing that I was told that Katie had died within a fast passage of time. I haven’t always been informed about these matters. A different death on that side of the family wasn’t known to me for multiple months after it happened. No one had sent me information. No one had invited me to any funeral. To this day, I don’t even know how all of that transpired. I don’t know where she’s buried or if she was buried at all. It’s more than a little upsetting. I held that in for a long time, but after an uncle who had been consistently kind to me took ill last year, I finally spoke up about how all of that was bullshit.

I hoped that things would change.
I hoped that there would be progress and work towards a better future.
Time had passed. It should be time to address it already, right?

Wrong.

It wasn’t going to happen this time. It didn’t happen when Jess died. Why would this time be any different? Why would it ever be anything but a tale of others running from accountability rather than addressing the elephant in the room? Perhaps in this regard, I am, as my family insists. Perhaps I’m just “crazy” to believe in the promise of a better future with folks being present and willing to do the work, having learned things over time.

Nope.
Nope.
Nope.

Life goes on even when it doesn’t. As trite as it might sound, one firm thing that has come about over the years of started drafts and attempts here and in the real world is that we have to come to reconcile with it even if others might not meet us to reconcile. Time is going to continue to pass. Some folks will never meet you where you want them to.

Sometimes, people and things die before their actual bodies die. To some extent, that should also be a goal. Folks live so many lives throughout the presence of their story. We aren’t the main characters anywhere. We are guests in the stories of others.

How we interact with our world over time should be fluid and evolving. It should be one of reflecting and considering where we can grow. Not all of it will be comfortable. Time isn’t always comfortable.

This year, I’m committing to resolving some of the time discomforts in real time just in case I’m out of time.  It’s going to happen anyway, so fuck it, I might as well.

 Additionally- in the time that it took to find the photos that I used for this post, I landed a piece on the an old-time classic site ironically discussing history and the passage of time. It will be about the American Dream and the differences between my ancestors and now. Stay tuned for that going to the list of portfolio bylines later.