There’s a curious phenomenon that begins in your brain when you start grocery shopping as an adult. You know where the aisles are, you compare prices and brands, but most out of character, you begin to check labels. The nutrition, weight, calorie content mumbo jumbo. Most importantly, your eyes will graze over the numbers and look for a singular one that means the most to you: the expiry date.
The expiry date, ah, the singular number that initiates the countdown to a produces death, the day it grows all wrinkly, changes colour and tastes funny, like some morbid food grim reaper. We plan our whole groceries around them, when’s the next buy, or we change our food habits suddenly, like furiously thickening the density of the peanut butter on a single slice of bread. Of course, there are often times we just ignore it altogether, sniffing at the milk like some deranged idiot to see if we can sense the slight shifts in pH values.
However, figuring out how to grocery shop around expiry dates was the easy part of adulting. Figuring how to treat every life event with an expiry date was the hard part.
It was not throwing things out before their deadlines arrive.
It’s holding on to that phone eventhough the new model is coming out and you can afford a change. It’s not dropping out of school even though a few assignments are missing and they needed to be rushed till five in the morning. It’s not cutting off of friendships just when the first argument arises. Not swallowing an excessive amount of pills when things have been going on too hard for too long.
The resilience of staying on to care for things whose time hasn’t come yet, the toughness to leave things in life aside for now and deal with it when you can.
It was to get rid of things that have extended their stay.
It’s understanding that it’s really time to declutter your space of items you don’t need. Time to reexamine unhelpful thoughts that have propelled and motivated you but there isn’t any need to anymore. It’s cutting off toxic relationships that have drained you even though it pains your heart deeply and all you feel like you should do is stay.
The firm resolution to take care of yourself, to not let spoiled things pollute your space, a toxicity that crawled into your ecosystems.
Yet, it was still being okay with the indefinite numbers of not knowing when the expiry dates were going to come.
It’s taking the risk to open your mouth to create connections without knowing when the fine line might snap. It’s being okay with reaching the end of education lines and a vast unknown of what happens now. It’s loving someone with a whole heart of uncertain periods even when you know it could head towards dead ends.
The solace in the absolute silence yet solidity of the end that is sure to come. The peace you make as you link fingers with the oblivion.
The delicate dance of hope and despair with time is the biggest concept I have yet to understand. Yet, it was letting go of the cranks and the cogs and the levers of clocks, willing to free the prying human fingers to manipulate our time, and simply succumbing to the silent countdown to inevitable expiry dates yet to come.
Trix Does Stuff 