The days are short but the decades are long

Content warning: suicide.

My last eight years went by at a constant pace. When my friends say the last year went by so fast, I’d reply with it was the same length as any other year, not only in a chronological sense, but in a phenomenological sense. At the extremes, my shortest days feel thrice as short, the longest days thrice as long. But that disappears when I zoom out. The shortest month I remember isn’t thrice as short, only a mere week shorter.

Perceived acceleration is supposed to be one of those adulthood things. You’ve probably heard this argument: the more you age, the smaller each day looks relative to your whole lifetime, so time passes faster when you’re an adult. And in The long view, a friend tells me that the most surprising part of being an adult was how much his perception of time has changed.

This steadiness of time is something I’ve wished for:

And it does have its perks. I’m saturating my life with activity. I’m wringing enjoyment out of my time. I’m savoring existence, at least when I’m not complaining about it.

Yet I cringe at the thought of growing older like this. Adults are supposed to take the longer view. The drives should get grander. Climbing the career ladder, investing for retirement, aiming for tenure, creating great works, searching for relationships, planning a family. Being 25 and not wanting any of these things feels okay. But what happens when I’m 35 and the only things I want to do are eat out with friends, write blog posts, learn math, run puzzlehunts, and play video games?

I’d be less concerned if I could imagine a future self wearing the shoes of long-term ambitions. Don’t children find romance gross until they’re teenagers? Don’t teenagers think they wouldn’t want kids, only to change their mind when they’re adults? People like me, people with similar backgrounds as me, change this way when they mature. Why would I be different? It’s not even about emotional acceptance—my rational self thinks I’ll never change either.

The nearsightedness hurts me most at work. Business demands the ability to have plans for the next month, the next quarter, the next year. I hate the project I’m working on, but it’ll be best for me long-term. A year from now, I’ll be glad I clenched my teeth. None of this changes the fact that it’s painful now. No amount of aphorisms will make delaying gratification tolerable.

I remember being sixteen, counting the days until I turned eighteen, waiting for the day I could run away from home. I’d break down in front of the librarian, and she’d tell me to wait, tell me it’d get better. I filled spreadsheets with research, scrolled through apartment listings, accounted my expenses, looked for places I could leech an internet connection from. At church services, while the pastor preached about this week’s flavor of bigotry, I’d dig my thumb into my fingers. I felt like my options were either waiting or suicide.

My feelings toward work aren’t as extreme. I love my coworkers, and I loved the work I used to do, and I don’t abhor anything I’m working on. But what does it say about me, if whenever I think about work, my first instinct is still what if I was dead? What does it say about me if I’d sell the farm for a drop of water? And what does it say about me, if I wanted everything after I turned eighteen to be the heavens’ reward for all my suffering, if I wanted the rest of my life to be an epilogue to my teenage woes, if I think the universe unjust for punishing me so?

I know, I’m clinging to these pains. I know my dramatic, disproportionate reactions arise from old wrinkles. My ever-localness, my time-stuckness, my view-narrowness. Maybe this is what I get for wishing to be a kid forever.