twenty-one

At some point, I turned 21.

I didn't notice when, I didn't notice how. Truthfully, 21 doesn't really mean anything. That's what everyone says. It's just another year, you're always growing, blah blah blah.

But truthfully, it feels like a hurdle of some kind has been cleared. I've stepped through the door, crossed the Rubicon, and the far bank of Styx is for once within reach. The childish world, where there is good and bad, tomorrow and next week, that seemingly endless path paved by all those that came before has finally come to an end. And being still in university, I can see, through the narrow crack of the closing door, those twenty-one children, teens and young adults that came before me waving goodbye as the cold march of time swallows them whole. Something has changed or is changing. Something that I never noticed and never knew was there.

Physically, that much is obvious. A lack of sleep now drains my spirit, my back aches from too many hours at my desk. I bleed randomly, I crave a diet other than tea and cold pizza and my rolled ankle still hurts. I am no longer a spry man of eighteen, who could study for hours on end without blinking, shrug off falls and scrapes without a rest, or subsist of whatever is in the pantry. But that was all expected, the hedonistic lifestyle of the teenager and uni student eventually gives way to a more sustainable life.

But mentally? I feel like a ghost of my former self. The days are short, the hours shorter. Everyday I wake to see the sunset, and spend my nights wandering the dark. I am alone, more than ever, my shadow lost amidst endless white walls and black carpets that echo empty voices back to my numb ears. I've moved somewhere new, my moon-viewing window blocked by brick and steel.

Every moment I spend with friends feels like trying to catch twisting smoke, everyone desperate to burn the touch of each other's spirit into our memories before it vanishes with the wind. We are all setting off into the deep unknown, through lands far and foreign as we all search for our path in life, but it is a big, big world and we are so small. What memories we have burn in our desperation, kindling for mere sparks of nostalgia.

I'm forgetting things, the smell of my grandmother's home, the taste of chicken pot pie, the dusty summer sun upon my skin or the sharp kiss of winter winds. That feeling of whimsy, that endless joy, the curiosity towards the unknown, unburdened and unshackled by the weight of life and the presence of death. When did it all begin to fade? Years, decades, days ago? How did I not know? And how much have I lost with knowing already?

The sand pours from the hourglass, every grain slipping from my fingers into the void below. But would it be so cruel to ask it to stop, just once? To allow me my goodbyes to that which has gone?