I have been finding it hard lately to understand how time is passing in this period of my life. Have I been here in this apartment long? What did I do last week? Has it already been three weeks? With my calendar being void of consistently scheduled responsibilities, time has felt like jelly. How does time work here? What marks the passage of the day?
I remember a moment feeling very adult at a dinner party with my parent’s friends when I was a kid. We had just moved to our house two months ago and when my dad joked about moving again, I said as precocious as I could muster, “but we just moved here!” (everyone laughed). I felt extremely clever to know that when adults say they just did something it refers to not only things that happened a day or a week ago but things that even happened months ago! I had learned that the passage of time was very different for adults than it was for me, but knowing this difference secured me a space in their world, or so I thought.
Now, as a semi-adult, I feel more confused than ever. How should I put words to the passage of time? What is a long time to me anymore?
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