It seems as if time is a parting, but I find more and more that nothing is ever truly ripped away.

Trying not to think about how fast it’s coming, trying not to let it be slow—absolute and agonizing. But it never seems to truly come to a stop, no pockets of a breakaway from everything and anything that sucks me farther and farther away from the brown-haired girl; a black hole, black hair. 

Sometimes I find I desire change, forcing it to happen and almost always ending up face-down on a desk, eyes closed, makeup runny then smudged. It’s funny to think about the beginning of writing, of my writing. Runny nose and runny away from things, from change, but looking over four years of a personal diary propagated and posted online for your amusement, I realize that everything catches up.

Maybe not in the sense that I experience regret, but a certain fondness for the person I was four years ago. Maybe not in the sense that I empathize with that person, but a certain acceptance for her through all of the writing, writing, writing.

Deciding where you will live, eat, sleep, cry, laugh, and draw the inner workings on the wall unvacated and reimagined is a task underwhelmed. Who really influences your choices? Who is really making your choices?

Hoping the passage of time will make it easier, a transition, maybe, just maybe, I will make it. Multipurpose moving forward, maybe, I will blink and the hard parts will be over and I will be where I am meant to be and would have become the person I am supposed to be.

But would I miss a chance to say goodbye, or would skipping, fast-forwarding the tape while barely paying attention to the time or the events or the conversations; submersed in the present held in my hand.

I don’t want to continue to see plans change, plans crumble, all in front of my eyes. Out of control with no changes left to be made, without action to be taken. Standing to the side, probably wearing slippers, looking on at the complete and utter dumpster fire my life has become, so defeated I can’t even begin to think, “What next?”

As the early embers of the morning sun burn, and the embers of the fire blend up into the oranges and yellows and spark with the sky, I manage one particular emotion: the stomach full of unknotting strings—possibility.

Moving forward from here and setting routine, adapting to the undesirable. Accepting the fact that I won’t be as alone in my own room anymore, adjusting to more noise and more experience and more of everything.

More to come. More writing. More stories to speak and to memorize. Another publication. Another seed to plant and to grow and till and make into my own design. Blending the old and the new together in the perfect transition under the amber glow.