Speeding Up

I'm not sure exactly when I noticed it.

I think it was late in my senior year of high school.

Before then, life, despite its ups, downs, highlights, and disappointments, had moved in a normal pace. School. Home. Summer. Winter. The rhythm was the same.

But now, I was on the brink of the rest of my life. All the major events of my life were about to start taking place. The ones your parents start planning for the day you are born. I was going to graduate high school. I was going to move into my own apartment. I was going to start college. I had met the man I was going to marry.

I was 17.

And at that point, time sped up. No just figuratively. I could actually feel time moving faster. And was still accelerating past me.

I recently read that as we age, one year becomes statistically shorter. When you are 2 years old, one year is one half of your life. When you are 50, one year is 1/50 of your life.

I wasn't aware of the math then, but never the less, I could feel it.

I still feel it every day.

I blinked, and college was over. I went to sleep, and medical school was over. I turned around, and my children are taller.

Some days still trudge by, measured out by pager beeps and sibling squabbles.

But most days, I feel things slipping past me, sand between my fingers.

And there are days I hate time for stealing my children's youth when my back is turned. They were infants, then toddlers, and now children. And my heart aches to think they will be teenagers, adults, and leave.

The strangest part of all of this is that I feel stationary, stuck in the same place as when this began. I feel 17 while the times of my life speed past me.