Time by Ferial Mohamed

At 17 I wept because I hadn’t been kissed yet. I thought life was inevitable and things happened to you, until I figured out that I was behind and that you had to make things happen or you’d miss it. 

But time was inevitable, wasn’t it? Only life was not. 

My Mamma didn’t tell me that part. Only that I would grow old like her and I would be wrinkled too and alone. Which scared me. I think she meant that I would become vulnerable - by this accumulation of years blended into experience blended into a life. Like the simplicity of sunrises and sunsets you will wrinkle and bones will creak and this is what it comes down to. If you’re not careful, the honesty of this can kill you. The progression of time is the ultimate truth-teller. As it moves it uncovers more and more of who you are, taking away the parts that should never have meant so much to begin with, leaving behind the residue as you figure out the identity of your uncorrupted self - a journey towards what really matters. 

It wears you down and lifts you up. It shows up again and again dragging behind it pain, rejection, joy, love, loss – until you finally start to process it all in new ways. You stop flinching. You start seeing the patterns. You start reaching for meaning. 

Nothing was ever perfect. There were the boundaries I honoured out of loyalty and then the ones I shattered for the sake of self, for the sake of selfishness, for the sake of being whole. For purpose. For freedom. There was always a hunger – to go deeper into the marrow of who I really was. I’ve wanted to feel life fill me in a way that leaves nothing untouched. To uncover the crevices of my soul. To know myself as someone alive. 

And love – oh, I’ve yearned for a love that doesn’t vanish in the morning light. A love that holds its shape in the quiet. A love that’s present. 

What I do know is the yearning hasn’t quieted. Still standing in front of time like it might offer me a second chance. 

I know I want my life to mean something, I want to own how I got here, to love with a depth that anchors me so deeply that Timbuktu couldn’t pull me loose. I want to feel womanhood as glory - to touch a life, a child, a lover. I want to know it wasn’t just about surviving. That something I did, felt, or gave made a mark.

Do I have regrets? Don’t we all have them? Does a hairless cat wrinkle at the neck (of course it does). But I’m still here and that’s not nothing. That’s everything. I will write the book. I will travel the world. I will love so hard it bends gravity. 

I know this much: it’s not just about the face he held or the mouth he kissed when you thought it was first love, but equally the heart that nurtured your mother when she was ill, the hands that raised children, the woman who learned how to say NO, staying with your parents and being gentle. It’s the disappointments that come from the complicity of commitment, to entangle yourself and sometimes from it the mercy of love. 

The flaw in the plan is the heart and mind don’t know what the body does. My Mamma warned me of this too. That you never felt old in your head, she said, no matter how much silver grew there. That bones bend but the heart beats on. The search does not fade. The truth is time doesn’t change you in the ways that matter, only people can do that. Like heartache can only soften you enough to become truly alive. And forevermore, today and tomorrow will always be more compelling than yesterdays.