mirror of time

Today I wondered something. After realising that I'm going to have to re-experience the nightmare I faced the year before, this time with my soul torn and broken and my body tired, I looked in the mirror of time. Showing every version of me from the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that. Today, I looked at myself from a little over a year ago. It was an almost faded memory of the day I came back from my first day back at school after the first term. I had realised that day that my plan of going to this new school to make friends and everything would be fine wasn't going to work at all. At the end of the day, I sat in my wardrobe crying to myself because I had no idea where I was going to go from here. I could barely imagine what my life was going to be like 4… 8… even 12 months from that point. I felt like all the hope I had built was gone, and I was on a lost path. 

Then I asked myself, did I wonder what my life was going to be like a year from that moment? 

And now… I'm not even sure. I think even after that, I was hopeful. I mean, I DID find an answer and a reason to keep moving forwards and I was filled with hope. I can imagine myself being super confident that everything was going to be okay, but sometimes I wonder if I was as hopeful as I really thought. Maybe I was just less worried than I was now. 

Nevertheless, I didn't really think I did call out for the future me. And after realising that I wasn't even sure, that freaked me out. So I thought about what I would tell myself back then. 

I could barely even form a sentence. All I could murmur was…

“I don't know when this will end. I'm sorry.”

I clasped my hands together, praying to… something. The last glimmer of hope I had left in me pulled itself together. I asked that if the person in the future, who could finally have everything they lost, tell me that everything will turn out okay in the end. And if they didn't, then pray a million times over for the same thing in the future. 

I told myself that maybe one more year of hell would finally start a new chapter in my life but, I don't know anymore. I can barely imagine myself happy in a year. And if I can, it feels fake. I don't know how I can survive the next 3 and a half, I just have to pray that I will finally be happy… and finally escape.