I've spent entirely too much time waiting for my life to begin. I know this sounds ridiculous, if not insane. My life began the day I was born, you might tell me. Or you may ask if I am somehow writing from somewhere else - a womb, another place I am waiting to exit.. whatever. The fact is, I am simply talking about years wasted. Minutes, hours, days and nights, months, years. Stacks of calendars, unceremoniously sent the way of all measurements of time. Plans made and carried out, or not. Birthdays come and gone, the births and deaths of family, friends, acquaintances. The loss of jobs, girlfriends, cars, and memories. The lingering fantasies of long ago, still hanging on like icicles refusing to drop from a frozen limb. I know, we all know.. that time is fluid. Like waves that will never recede. Scientists tell us that, indeed, time does change speeds - and even has warps and ripples in it, like some kind of endless sea of fabric. I don't know the formulas or origins of such things - I only know that I would like to blame time for my inabilities or insecurities, but that more than a measure, time is a tool, if nothing else. I would like to think I've used it wisely; and there have been times I'm sure I have - but not enough. So what I do now, with whatever time I have left, is pick a path. These words are steps. Where from here?
As far back as I can remember, I felt a connection to the world that made no sense to me. I don't know how, but I knew that few others around me felt the same way. To describe this would be to try and assign a taste to air. Impossible. In all outward respects I was a child like every other. I laughed, cried, played, wanted and hid. I clung to my parents when frightened, whined when I didn't get my way, and wondered about everything I couldn't understand. I became frustrated when I could not do something or did something wrong. I hated school, praying for snow days to a god I knew nothing of, but in my imagination appeared as Santa Claus - kindly, gentle and obliging. I had an imaginary friend - a girl, whose name changed depending on what girl at school I happened to have a crush on at the time. I clumsily tried to play some sports, but found much more interest in being by myself and imagining other time periods, other places. I liked to change who I was - putting myself in different circumstances to see how I might react. Maybe that time was the beginning of all this.. this jotting and sketching and travelling I do. I don't know. I can see so much of it clearly, and yet there are times I feel like I am remembering a movie. As if it wasn't me at all.