Chronophobia

Greetings. A new blog today but first I do regret the tone of my last post. Needlessly oppositional and a sign of how my mood was slipping.

To balance things out I thought I’d get back to examining and critiquing myself again.

Still a few things to confront on the journey to fully accepting myself. Something I’m coming to terms with about myself. A new source of interest in regard to a realisation about myself. A new perspective to come from and engage in what has been a long term issue.

Fear of time wasted. Fear of time lost. Everything in life that I have lost reduces to the same thing. The loss of fun time.

It’s not time itself I fear, far from it. I love time. I don’t give myself enough time because I’m always looking to do something with my time. To fill existence and fend off the blackest emptiness.

Regrettably the term Chronophilia has been co-opted by nonces as a sanitizing euphemism.

Time is the most fascinating concept. I challenge anyone to attempt to define it without getting tied in knots.

To talk about living in the present at every moment is to ignore the past and the future. I’ve been thinking about how it feels like time stands still despite the fact that time always passes. To connect past and future at the joint of the present is a way to ensure never to get bored of the present.

Everyone knows how time flies when you enjoy yourself but when you’re not, you stare at the clock willing time to pass quicker. And yet it drags more than ever.

There’s something to the way time flies when you’re absolutely engaged in doing something that it feels like no time was lost at all and the present seemed to go on and on.

And so to the artistic and romanticized summary of recent times. But roughly two years ago time itself was shattered for me. The world stopped turning. The future and the past were lost to trauma leaving me trapped as time stopped and died.

Metaphorically my heart stopped beating, everything died around me. Everything changed and nothing was the same. In my heart, nothing has changed, no time has passed. Nothing will ever change again. Time itself has no meaning and the present moment is in a state of chaotic flux.

All is potential and nothing is real. The reason I haven’t moved on and gotten over things is because the moment I do, the world have restart and I will wake up knowing that time has been lost.

I will be older and little wiser, without any momentum to kick on. I will have to think about the future again and plan for things that I don’t actually want in any way, shape or form.

It means I’ll have to start caring again and that was ultimately my downfall. It comes at great cost to invest yourself. Through the transactional lens good things can come your way but it can be more of a curse than a blessing.

Time is the most valuable commodity you can invest because you can never get it back. I’ve spent my whole life trying to hoard as much time as I can because what in life was actually worth giving it up?

One other thing I’m truly afraid of now is confronting how much has gone to rot in the last few years as I refused to spend time maintaining things. How much time will it cost to repair the rot? Can I not just get away with hiding forever?

I’ve come to appreciate avoidance again, it’s an underrated defense mechanism that’s gotten a bad reputation. I’ve tried to address avoidance and tried to overcome it. It didn’t work and I don’t expect it ever to do so.

This is the core of who I am and living my life by my own rules. Avoiding things I don’t like in pursuit of all that I do. Because it doesn’t make sense to waste time feeling uncomfortable.

I was hyper-attached to the present moment, only ever seeking to improve the present moment, extend the present moment, let it evolve in a continuum, let it dominate the past and the future.

Even if it’s the reason I’m so anxious all the time, I wouldn’t ever give it up. I never have.

There have been so many times I wished I could stop dwelling on all the loss and pain. I know why I did and still do dwell. It’s only to keep those moments alive in the present and ensure I never have to say goodbye, never have to let go of the present and never have to face the future.

I’m not hostage to the opposing forces of past and future. I stand guard, eyes on both, chaining them both to the present moment, to the very core of my being.

If we’re all honest, I rather suspect that fear of death is in fact just a manifestation of the true fear of lost time. I remember as a child, the first time I learned of the concept of death. Had a big old cry as I understood I didn’t want to ever die.

Didn’t want to ever lose conscious existence and be no more.

Roy Batty is the hero of Blade Runner because he wants “more life, fucker.” Rutger Hauer understood it so deeply, he adlibbed the famous Tears in Rain speech.

The long search for connection with others has always been about connecting myself to something bigger and deeper. More profound. The connection of consciousness and human experience. Connecting my past to my future, creating a conduit for joy in the present moment.

A gateway for a troubled past to become a hopeful future filled by living in the present moment.

Change can be good or bad. It’s not change I’m truly afraid of but change represents a death and a birth. If change is a natural evolution of something then it is connected. If not then it is a conflict, a separation that only feels like a death.

The darkest demonic inner critic serves some useful functions. Keeps me anchored through times of loss. Keeps me in the present. Reminds me of how good life could have been and tells me when life is too shit to deal with.

I’m slowly turning what used to be negatives into positives by understanding and appreciating what makes me me and why. Everything for a reason and all that.

Time marches on and a thousand other cliches. I’ll do my best forever and always to ignore and deny it. It’s what I do best.

3 hours spent writing the blog and it’s always time well spent. I don’t regret a single second.

Thank you for reading xx