Mind the gap between the train and the platform. Take your time as you step to ensure safety.
Dear Reader,
I find myself thinking about those words quite often. It is not something most people would give much attention to, but it seems to be all that my mind can think about now. I imagine the platform as a metaphor for myself, and the train as the vessel that carries all the endless possibilities, endless locations, and endless opportunities in my life that are coming in and out of reach. I think of the gap not as something physical that stands between the train and where I stand, but as something symbolic. The gap is a measure of time, of who I am and who I am becoming.
It has been two months, eleven weeks, seventy-nine days, 1,919 hours and 115,002 minutes (as I am writing this) since I have been abroad. I feel that time is taunting me. I feel constricted. Was September not just yesterday? Time is moving so fast yet not fast enough, if that is even possible, or if I am making sense right now. It feels like I am running out of time, but how is that possible if my life seems to have just begun?
As my thoughts come to a halt, I am reminded that I am young.
Twenty
Twenty. I say it out loud. It sounds young, vibrant, and filled with life. Yet it feels almost impostorish coming out of me. I feel as if I have no reason to panic when I say it; I have time. London was not an outlier. But I can’t help but think I should have accomplished thousands of things by now. I look at some of my peers and feel as if I am not on their level. I should have done this, and done that, and done more. I’m stuck in almost a wave of nothingness, a stagnation, and I don’t know myself the way I did when I was in London.
I was free in London; I wasn’t constrained. I am a huge city person. The city makes me feel endless, filled with possibilities, and I feel creative there in a way that feels natural. I remember taking endless walks across the city, ending at different parks; it was everything and more. It was everything. Sometimes I feel as if I am mourning a person, or maybe a version of myself that existed there. Nostalgia is the silent killer. Sometimes I feel like I can still remember the smell of the air there, the way the breeze would brush against my arm, the walk from the British Museum to my home there, less than three minutes, and I vividly remember it all. Not my home, but I know my way around, and maybe that is why it still lives so clearly in me.
Time
I felt expansive. I remember one night towards the end, some of us started watching the movie About Time, a movie that hit harder than I ever could have expected. Now that I am back in the States, I find myself thinking about it quite often.
If I had the ability to time-travel, would I?
Yes.
I have so much I would change and so much I would do differently. If I could prevent my grandmother from getting sick, I would, even if it meant perhaps not living in the States. If I could prevent my grandfather from smoking and not getting cancer, I would in a heartbeat. I would do my London experience again. I would do so much more if given the chance.
That’s the thing about time. You can’t go back, no matter how much you want. You can’t relive those moments. All you are left with are the traces of memories, of stains, of imprints, and the wave of nostalgia.
As I have grown, I have realized that in many ways, all we truly keep are memories. There is something bittersweet about that, but it is also life. I think that awareness has changed how I see time, especially now in my twenties, because it reminds me that whatever feels ordinary now will one day become something I look back on. It makes me want to live more fully, even knowing that not every day will feel extraordinary. I will make mistakes, some days will be hard, some will be amazing, and some will be completely average, but that is still life.
I am young, I am only twenty, and I think part of growing is learning that not every moment has to be perfect to still become meaningful later.
The fig tree
Suddenly, I am back on the platform. I can feel the rush of the people pushing past me as I just stare at the train. I think about a post on social media that I saw a couple of weeks ago.
“Don’t let your figs rot.”
There is a sense of obligation I didn’t have in London that I do now. I want to do it all. I want everything. The branches of my fig tree stretch in every direction. I want to have a million things in my portfolio, to have a million careers, to study everything.
I want so much that I do nothing.
The fear of not having enough time paralyzes me.
Fear
I think part of that fear comes from constantly seeing the people around me, people my age, all doing different things, moving through life in ways that seem so certain. Social media makes it worse because it creates this endless stream of people my age who seem to already have everything figured out, building careers, becoming successful, becoming millionaires, reaching milestones that make my own life feel delayed in comparison. It is strange because I do not feel unmotivated; if anything, I want too much. I want to do five hundred things, to live in many places, to create, to experience everything fully, but sometimes wanting so much makes time feel even smaller.
In London, time did not feel this sharp. It felt open, almost forgiving, as if there was still room to become whoever I wanted without measuring how quickly it was happening. Now, in my twenties, time feels louder because every year seems to arrive with new expectations, and the future can begin to feel less like a possibility and more like something I am being asked to catch up to.
But time will pass. It does. Even if I am conflicted on whether I want it to pass or not, it still does.
So I grieve.
Grief and becoming
Not just the city, or my time there, but a version of myself that now feels the pressure of the real world approaching her. In one year, I will have graduated from college, hopefully starting law school, and no longer the girl who was walking alone in London with no purpose.
I think I know why London lingers the way it does. Or maybe I don’t, and I am pretending I do. Nonetheless, I feel my limbo starting to move.
This isn’t meant to be a sad story. Quite the opposite, actually. I think it is more of a yearning for what most of us crave deeply: more time.
But for goodness’ sake, I am just twenty.
That doesn’t make any of my fears less valid.
I am human after all.
Step forward
Dear reader, if, when you read this, you find yourself standing on a platform with a gap between you and the train, feeling behind, feeling loss, feeling as if you are running out of time, remember that the fig tree does not rot because it has too many branches. It rots because it was never given the opportunity to be chosen, to grow.
Take a step forward. It’s okay to not have everything figured out, or to be certain. I know it might be scary, but that is part of the beauty. Nothing good ever comes easy.
So, mind the gap between the train and the platform.
And go.
