Dear Digital Diary

Dear Digital Diary,

I’m just now learning how to be here.

It’s a funny thing, time. It’s ironic how you can feel you’re doing something productive and still use it up, just the same as you would if you wasted it.

We are taught to plan for the future, and we hyper-fixate on things from the past; whether it be people, or memories, or mistakes. As a society, it feels as though we put a lot of emphasis on how we use time. How time is precious.

I’ve always said that nostalgia might be the thing that kills me eventually. I’m often missing things, and it feels like a deep hurt, even if it was good. I miss people I hate, too, sometimes. Or I miss who I was, even if that person no longer has a place in my life, and shouldn’t have. I made a lot of mistakes before now. Things like that happen when you’re growing, and even when you’re sure you’re grown.

You get older and you start to have regrets. And it’s not things like wishing you had bought that one sweater, but they’re terrible regrets that eat you up inside until everything is dark.

Grief works like that, too. We miss somebody and have a difficult time feeling as though we can continue to experience happiness. It comes in waves, as do most things. Even on mood stabilizers, everything fluctuates. It’s the same as the tides, the moon cycles, the amount of rain that comes from a rainstorm.

Time isn’t the enemy, is what I’ve begun to realize. It’s the perspective. Existing within it is a fact of living, and to not live is almost offending the time we’ve been given. One cannot predict the future just as one cannot recreate the past.

The present, as once said in a beloved childhood film, is today. And today is a gift.

However you choose to live it is up to you. But today we are alive. Today we will live.