Let's Talk About Time

Infamous words for just about anything: It takes time.
Does it really? Does time smear your heartache with imaginary sutures and hardening glue? Does time build a ramp for you to disengage from pain and confusion? Does time wrap it's forceful arms around your frail-like being and mend you back to life?
Maybe for some it does, maybe for some it doesn't. I'll tell you what time has done for me: nothing. I personalize time as an unruly nature that we have no control of. We can't speed it up nor slow it down. We can't ask time to freeze while we grasp onto a moment or memory. We can't bend and manipulate it into a sculpture of lucidity and permanency. Time just is. And it sucks.
Change occurs within oneself. How we manifest it, suppress it, own it, discard it, is completely up to us. I personally ignore time and instead focus on myself and what I can control versus what I can't (but it doesn't mean that I don't try). In fact, because I don't like time, I've also grown to not like people very much. Call it a phase or a consequence of my brother's passing, but because I don't trust time, I'm also distrusting of people and what they think is best for me.

What is best for me is running. I run. I run thoughts in my mind as though the very action of thought will change the world I live in. I run my hands and wring them through water several times a day as though I can wash away what I've touched and frequently grasp for. I actively nourish my body with healthy meals and water to ensure that my blood is running at full capacity to support my aching insides. I run with my feet a few times of week in a desperate attempt to feel my brother running with me on my left. My knees ache, shoulders tense up, face burns from the early morning sun but my voice says Run, Yolie, run. Don't stop. C'mon. Keep going. I run to keep Charley alive and breathing and within the beats of my heart. Who cares that others who have fallen wayside don't understand why I run when he's since passed- what does he care and how does that help him? It does. I believe that while I run, my soul channels his with intents of positivity, warmth and support. Although the place he dwells may offer all the love he could manage, I firmly believe that he feels our love for him, too.
Don't you feel loved? Don't you know when someone is basking you with genuine embraces and commitment? Can you not identify fakeness, a phony or call out pure bullshit? I can. I know when I'm being coddled or toyed with. And I have zero tolerance for anything or anyone who doesn't belong in the realm I'm dizzied in.

So, I run; run to provide myself with endurance and strength for myself, my family and for Charley. While I run and seek prayer, I am feather-light and withered. I have not a thought about anything else but rallying my pain and the loss of my brother. While I run I contemplate the time that's passed and I dismiss it with all the cliche's that come with loss. As my feet tire and swell, I envision my brother's own tired mind and swelling heart and actively remind myself that no matter how painful the pavement is to my knees, no matter the amount of tears I sweat, no matter how fatigued I am, my brother Charley felt insignificantly more on such a painful level. Perspective. While I run, I have perspective. And this is how I manage time: I run. And I celebrate a life that never quit.