me vs. the time war

This is how I am losing the time war.

Movie still from Perfect Days (2023)

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You know those recurring dreams that resurface every so often, unexplainably, like they’ve been encoded somewhere deep into your body? Mine is always the same, the one where I am running late. I’m sitting to put on my shoes, but my hands won’t cooperate. Laces tangle, the tongue folding inwards. The act itself stretches on unbearably, interminably, and when I finally rise, the world tilts. I try to move, but instead I falter, stumble, slow myself down with the very effort meant to propel me.

I am not alone, though. The worst part is the periphery: I watch people I know timely move forward as I fall again, again, again. I curse my stupid, useless legs and strike them. Why can everyone glide through life with unearned ease, while I remain so damn rooted, helpless? I’ve always believed dreams carry truth, and if my mind insists on conjuring the same reiteration every few nights, I assume it’s for a reason.

Naturally, the dream seeps into my waking life, as my biggest fear is not finding my place in this world because I was just too late. To find, one day, that everyone I knew has surged forward while I remain abandoned in place, orbiting the same claustrophobic patch of comfort I’ve deluded myself into calling safety. My fear thrives on arbitrary deadlines I’ve imposed on myself through shame: By 25, you will no longer be mediocre. By 25, you’ll have a successful newsletter and people who care about what you say. By 25, no one will look down on you, not even yourself.

How do you exist without constantly tripping over your own limbs, your own insane expectations? I used to promise myself that I’d catch up, eventually, and become like everyone else to quote a journal entry verbatim. It’s absurd, the way I idolize my periphery from afar. Distance often turns individuals into something solid, finished, composed. Then I get close enough to see the cracks in people — in the hidden spirals, the way their certainty evaporates under pressure, how they carry their own chaos in looming shadows that refuse to shrink. I’m inescapably reminded of the preposterous, endless human task of trying to reconcile what we want with what we can manage.

That still doesn’t make my fear any better.

And so it persists, day after day, the same tension between wanting to move forward fast and remaining suspended. Deadlines, expectations, small failures – they accumulate quietly and unceremoniously, until I’m convinced I lost the time war with myself. I still don’t have answers. I just keep going, weighed down by all I think I should have accomplished by now, wondering if the faltering will ever relent.