I am afraid.

I’m feeling time, and that makes me afraid.

I’m afraid of what I know, and afraid of what I don’t.

My mother died a year to the day “When the levee breaks” was written. I am still dealing with the loss, the aftermath, today.

I feel like I am both running and running out of my own time. A hamster on a wheel, no direction, just going to keep going. There is no outrunning time, it is always there, it is always one step ahead of me. And so I run, neither towards nor away, with time keeping pace for a while and then, zoom, gone. Sometimes I catch up but that’s the exception not the rule; I can’t keep pace.

And so I am afraid of the time that I am losing, time that even as I write this post is already gone. And I am looking at where I am now, and where I was when my mother died, and I am keenly aware of my time, and of how limited it is, and of how precious it is.

And I want more than just to run for the sake of running. I want to run to something. To joy. To fulfillment. To love. To places I’ve never been and experiences I’ve never had, and to the places and things I’ve loved and want to return to. I want to feel the ache of desire, the pull of longing. I want to remember what it was like to live deliberately. And more than anything I do not want to be afraid anymore.