Measuring Time

I have an odd work schedule.  I'm off on Thursdays and Fridays and work from 2:00 PM to 11:00 PM on the other days of the week.  I measure my weeks on this schedule; the weeks start on Saturday and end on Friday.  It's interesting to look at that very conventional system and see how easy it is to adapt to whatever I need; I lay out my week differently than just about everyone else I know but it's what I gotta do.

I take that information and look at my past eight months.  I've lost three important people in my life and the impact has been tremendous.  I see Indi dropping me off at the airport to go to BlizzCon last October and see a very different person getting on that flight.  I look forward and see myself helping Indi move out.  Then I see myself watching old home movies on VHS with Dad the night before Grandma's funeral.  Then I hear my uncle's voice and see myself embracing my mother after I learned that Dad was gone.  It's been over five months since that day and time has been measured differently.

There are days that it feels like I'm on vacation from myself.  It doesn't feel like a short period of time anymore, but there's still a lingering feeling that everything will return to normal someday.  Objectively, I know this isn't true.  Other days I feel like I've been on my own forever and I don't remember what it was like to curl up at night and be happily in the arms of another, though that honestly isn't that long ago.  To fully appreciate the strangeness of time, all I really have to do is look at my work and realize that this time last year I was just completing my training for an entry level position and now I'm responsible for a team and well known throughout the center.

My point with all of this is that we all feel time differently.  This isn't just a you vs. me observation, but a me vs. me observation too.  I feel time differently, sometimes moment by moment.  It's honestly like I'm time traveling within myself.  I'm broken.  I'm fixed.  I'm ready to move on.  I'm not.  I think of Dad and laugh.  I think of Dad and cry.  I pick up my phone to text something funny to Indi.  I remember that it's not the same.  I've been here forever.  I only just got here.

There's progress in that realization.  I do remember a few months ago when I felt broken ALL of the time.  That's not the case anymore.  There is a method to this madness...at least, there'd better be.