Time isn’t a gentle river — it’s a violent, churning maelstrom that sometimes vomits the past into your face, leaving you gasping and tasting the bitter tang of forgotten moments.

I was thirty-seven when I first noticed the lines around my eyes. 

Cruel etchings. 

Each a tally mark for a year lost, a dream buried, a laugh forgotten. 

They weren’t wrinkles. 

They were time’s graffiti, sprayed across my face in the night when I wasn’t looking.

But time has a way of catching up, doesn’t it?

One Tuesday (or was it a Friday?), I found myself walking through a door in my bedroom and emerging from my childhood closet. 

The smell of old fear punched me in the gut, knocking the air from my lungs.

My younger self sat on the bed, tears streaming down her face. I reached out to comfort her.

At her feet lay a mangled teddy bear, stuffing and sharp objects spilled out like guts.

“I didn’t mean to break him,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I was just so angry.”

I reached out. My hand connected, flesh to flesh, past to present. She flinched.

“Am I a bad person?” Her eyes, wide and fearful, searched mine for absolution.

“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” she added. “The anger. The fear.”

Her small hand pressed against her chest, feeling a grief she couldn’t name.

I wanted to lie, to tell her that adulthood was all ice cream and late bedtimes. But the truth spilled out instead.

“No,” I said, “it gets worse.”

Her eyes widened, tears threatening to spill over again.

I continued, “But that’s okay. Because you learn that ‘okay’ isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision.”

As the room began to fade, my younger self gripped my hand tighter. “Will I survive?” she asked.

I smiled, finally understanding the lesson time had been trying to teach me all along. “You’ll do more than survive. You’ll live fiercely.”

The lesson? Time’s backward flow isn’t about finding comfort in the past or hope for the future. It’s about recognizing that every moment – painful, joyous, or mundane – is part of living. And living, real living, is always fierce.

That’s a lesson worth learning, even if it takes a lifetime to understand.