All the scribbles in my diaries from three years ago, all the cries of being 'afraid of time'. I get it now. Time is my captor, I'm scared of getting heavier with fear as I grow. I'm scared no amount of my kindness can erase all I've done.
The farther I run the quicker the past catches up with me. No ghosts by my bedside, or abnormal heartbeat rates, or past loves calling again. Nothing is chasing me but I am weighed down by everything.
What do I do when I'm thirty and my life revolves around the one person I want to see everyday? When I have a breathing child with him, looking at me with curious eyes that turn angry down the road.
What do I do at fifty when my child starts coming home late? Or learns to answer back to her father and I have to watch the two loves of my life fighting? What do I do when she wishes someone else was her mother instead?
What do I do at sixty when I am tired but I have to watch a new set of kids come into the world and grow again?
Seventy, when the words on my books are suddenly too small for me to read. When my favourite songs from decades ago start to fade out and become white noise... when you start to forget what year we are in or where we live or who I am...?
What do I do at eighty when you are gone? You say I will have our kids, our grandkids, which just bred more fears; what if they don't like me? What if they don't want to hold my hand or even sit next to me because I smell of oil or I mumble too much?
What do I do if I'm still alive at ninety and I've only spent my whole life wishing I was dead?
After twenty-four years of dark, I admit my fear of my past. It will catch up to me one day. So what do I do when I am under a roof with the only person who knows how to calm me down, but I still awake to accelerated heartbeats and voices screaming in my head and fire on my skin?
I'm scared, Faruq, and I'm scared having you with me every day doesn't help. The world is still too loud for me and no wedding band will change that.
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