Two Years

I can’t stop thinking about the future these days. Maybe it’s an unconscious reaction to my seventeenth birthday coming up, which I hadn’t really thought about consciously. When I was ten or twelve my future stretched out in front of me and I can see into the distance; middle school, high school. But now, I try to imagine my life even just two years in the future and I can’t I can’t I can’t. I could be living in a dorm or back home or in a shoebox apartment – and all the furniture would be pieces I’ve never seen, and the books that adorn the shelves would have words unknown to the current me, but in two years they’ll be mine. There’ll be strangers who are my friends and my friends will scatter continents away.

In two years I can be having the time of my life or I can be miserable but I won’t be the girl I am today, I will be a stranger. She’ll have new shoes and new teachers and thoughts that would never cross my mind today, and I am becoming her, and I feel the change in my bones. I can always look into my past because I hold on to journals and mementos like they’re made of gold, but the future is a different beast.

The future is a void that I’ve been staring at for weeks and I feel myself shift under its pressure. The freedom it offers me is a double edged sword; it passes through my body like steel wire covered in silk, a breaths away from deadly.

I’m elated.