Tyler M.
Photography by Ally Szabo
If you’re reading this, time is a social construct.
I don’t think there is a concept more profound to me than the concept of time. Well, that’s a lie. It’s actually the concept of life in general — you know, why we exist, how we exist, the whole nine yards. But it's where these two concepts intersect is where I found myself running into problems.
As I entered my senior year of high school, the stress that I normally had during those first three years was starting to dwindle. Less schoolwork and extracurriculars I had to worry about gave me a lot of time to think about other things. I found it easy to think about time, oftentimes lying awake at night to think about it. The thoughts would quickly turn from optimism to fear. Thinking about time led to thinking about happiness and reflecting on the past, which led to thinking about life, to thinking about the future, which led to thinking about ... death. The dreaded word, a word that still kind of haunts me now as I write. That thought of death caused me to lie awake for longer, blanketed in an overwhelming sense of panic and stress. I found myself tossing and turning, oftentimes finding it hard to catch my breath each night until my brain could no longer stay awake. Each day was the same. Go about the ‘awake’ hours as normal, then dread the thought of being left with my thoughts as I long for sleep.
I lived with it. “It’s just a part of me, I guess,” I thought. I would sometimes reach out to friends, many times at 3 a.m. saying, “I just thought about death, so I’m bothering you until I forget it.” They did the best they could, but when did it get to the point where it would be a burden? Push came to shove, and I eventually, very randomly in my first year of college, mentioned it to my mom. She, being a school counselor, didn’t like what was going on in my head almost more than I didn’t.
She suggested I mention it to my doctor, which I did in the most nonchalant way I could fathom. He was helpful... for the moment. He described ‘what I had’ as a form of anxiety that features catastrophic thoughts. It now had a title. Cool, I guess. He ordered a bunch of blood tests and scans so I could feel as though I was ‘safe’ in my own body. One of the things I feared most was dying in my sleep, or very randomly, from an undetected health issue. Crazy sounding, I know, but it’s something that I simply could not get out of my head. And finally, he referred me to a therapist. I obliged, despite my opposition at the moment. Maybe it would help.
I saw said therapist the next month. Needless to say, I never did return. But not because I was ‘cured.’ Therapy is not for everyone. Or maybe, THAT therapist isn’t for everyone. I never tried again with someone else, despite pushback from some friends. I just didn’t feel like it was for me. Someone trying to tell me how to best work through my problems when they never experienced it firsthand was really difficult for me to process. I didn't like it. And he kept trying to find reasons for my anxiety about time and death, oftentimes pointing to things that I absolutely knew for sure were not the cause and I told him that. But he ended up beating a dead horse, and I felt like there was no hope with this route.
So, I moved on. I never saw that therapist or any therapist ever again. I still had the thoughts, the anxiety, the lack of sleep. Death lingered in the back of my mind. Honestly, it still does to this day. But I think I’ve found ways to really control how deep and far my thoughts can range, and it took practice.
The busier I would get as college moved on, the less time I had at night to lie awake thinking. I was so exhausted that I no longer had to worry. This wasn’t exactly healthy, I’m aware, but it was a solution. But there were of course moments like breaks or during the summer that time found itself coming back into my life, when I didn’t have to focus on those assignments and complicated friendships. And as I slipped into the endless black hole of impending doom, I would try to convince myself of several things. “Tyler, you’re only twenty years old, you’re healthy, and you have lots of time left.” I would put things into perspective. “The years are short, but the days are long.”
That’s where I want to hit and reflect most. “The years are short, but the days are long.”
If I stop putting things in such grand perspectives, I could reason that each day, each hour, and each minute mattered. I think the biggest takeaway I’ve had is that time should be measured by value rather than length. Why should I fear my eventual death in (hopefully) sixty or so years rather than making sure my time left is fulfilling?
If you’ve made it this far, I think it’s obvious to see that much of what is in this letter is left unresolved. Frankly, it probably never will be. And that’s okay; not all stories need a happy ending, or any ending for that matter. Unlike this letter, the story of life has its eventual end.
There is no ‘forever.’ But by recognizing that the value of your time is most important, I found the ability to limit my worries about the inevitable. They say not to get too focused on the small, minuscule things in life. But sometimes that’s what keeps us grounded. It really is all about perspective, and at the end of the day, time is simply a social construct.
Tyler M., Villanova University
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