future me is watching

but she won't say what she wants me to do

The dream version of myself is a robot. She longs for nothing, she feels nothing. Her energies and emotions may not be empty but stagnate, steady and flat. She has no desires outside the realm of the box I put her in.

I claw towards her, yearn for her, I crawl on my hands and knees and outstretch my eager palms. Sometimes my flushed fingertips graze against her, if only for a moment, before she dips once again from my desperate reach.

She is a mannequin, a figure of clay which I mold and shape, who I pose into formation in my mind. Yet, outside of my imagination, the clay is too dry, it crumbles, it hardens too soon. So set in her ways.

There was a time when the clay was moist, malleable, slick and watery. But that, too, brought its own set of challenges. I didn’t have control, I couldn’t have control. My steady hands so often interrupted by the shakes, the bashes, the storms of my environment. The cocoon where I was to incubate; the kiln in which I was to fully harden, it felt more like a sidewalk. They stepped on me, they tossed me around. Maybe some watched their step and walked on forward.

I always thought I had time. I could smooth over the edges, softly mold her body back into place. They told me, “As long as your heart is beating, there is time to start over.”

But time feels like a wall in motion, unforgiving. You can choose to walk forward as it echoes behind, or you can cling to its walls. I freeze, it shoves me forward, but I’m stubborn. I refuse to take a step. I smush my ear against it and listen close.

The block universe theory proposes that all of time exists in this moment; that an infinite number of alternate realities exist which are all happening simultaneously. When I listen close, I believe it, because I can still hear the breaking voice of that shy teenager, the bubbling chatter of child me, the quiet curiosity of my toddler brain’s playground, and none of them have ever left me. They feel so real, it could be as if they are still happening in this present moment.

I cling because I’m terrified. I’m not turning into the person these versions of me thought I would become. The skies of childhood and adolescence are innocent, piercing blue, seemingly neverending. The beaming noon sun promised to bake my clay body, and it seems as though my sun has set. The explosive strokes of reds, pinks, and purples promised to me never revealed themselves.

They tell me I’m still young, consciously I know it. I have so much time to play with that many would envy me for. So many move, change careers, change lifestyles, so much so that their 20s become unrecognizable in comparison to their current selves.

I can’t help but feel like I’m doing it wrong. Alongside those with envy, I find my future self. Her timeline exists in this present moment, too, and I sense that she wants me to be doing something else right now. I feel her urgency, I squint my eyes, I try to listen harder, but she’s blurry. I don’t know what she wants me to do, but it isn’t this.

always quietly watching

Wedged between the dimensions of my younger selves; let down and confused, and my older selves; injecting me with haste and confusion, I find myself in the aimless garden of twenty-four. Decision fatigue, paralysis, and exhaustion envelop my being. To put pressure on those who are lost is a cruel act. But I recognize that to stay here in this garden between cannot be an option, for the simple fact that the wall of time lingers just behind, ready to shove me forward regardless of my hesitation.

Which flowers to water, which to let dry away. Which to pick, which to leave to grow more bountiful. To tend to the weeds now or risk them becoming unmanageable for a future version of myself. I live in a realm of such limitless choices that my urge defaults towards doing nothing. I’m convinced that inaction will buy me time, that I can wait for the right decisions to find me. But as the wall of time looms, I realize again and again that to choose nothing is still a choice, and a tragic one at that.

the garden between

In another timeline, I wonder if the robot version of me exists. Was there ever a reality where I was able to accomplish such a feat? Her home immaculate, her body without flaws, her mind estranged from distress. Her career flourishing, her finances impeccable, her relationships whole. The woman who wanted to do it all, and did it, all with a permanent smile on her face.

Is such a balanced reality even attainable, and even still, is it what I truly desire? Is the mess of life not what leads us to find our excitement? Can our wildest callings in life be confined within the domains of rigid perfection? Are these gardens between not some of the most fruitful periods of our timelines?

I don’t have the ability to capture the breath of my future self, whispering down on me that this aimless era will all make sense. That it was meant to be a part of my story, to change direction, to propel me for the destined happiness that awaits me. When all feels uncertain, it can feel hard to trust in the unknown that the choices you make will work out in your favor. As I shed through the layers of time, I can get so obsessed with what is being lost that I completely miss what is being gained. This fruitful, messy, confusing time is mine to play with and that is a privilege. To be lost is to stumble into the freedom of opportunity. And so, rather than spend it paralyzed in fear, I’ll search for water. I’ll spritz it into my clay, breathe life back into my creation, and begin molding the updated future me; unbound from the perfect robot I so rigidly planned for. I don’t know how what she’ll become, but isn’t the excitement in the mystery of it?