Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time

by Angela Brown

Death, I had determined, was a rule to be followed by everyone else, something so far in my future it seemed acceptable—logical even—to put off thinking about it in any sincere sense. It was like paying taxes.

I’ve been a list maker my whole adult life. Lists have always made me feel in control, like I could easily manage any earthly calamity so long as I organized the solution into the appropriate number of bullet points.

Once we got through the week, the month, the school year, the holidays, the nonsense, the stress, we’d find time to do the things we longed to do. But then we never did. Life, it turned out, could wait.

I mean, who wants to spend her career thinking about feelings and being forced into a life of black turtlenecks, berets, and a rotation of strong coffee and croissants?

College is unique in that way. Time is compressed. Friendships are fast-tracked. One minute, you’re strangers; the next, you eat greasy takeout together every night and shower in the same hallway.

“You don’t need to study to be a writer.” Marian spread out her arms and twirled, right there in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. “What you need to do is to get out and live.”

Meetings that could have been emails. They were our departmental specialty.

“You know, it’s okay to be happy and to still have things about your life that you want to change.”

Ours was not one of those sad friendships where the only thing that kept it burning was a shared set of dusty memories. It was just that sometimes it felt important to remember the person you used to be and the person you’d once told yourself you’d eventually become.

For reasons I could not define, the whole experience felt like chaos. Like poetry.

That happens in middle age; your relationship turns into a slumber party.

It’s strange to think about people you’ve never met, let alone people you couldn’t even see. But suddenly, I wanted to step inside all their brains and find out if, like me, they had unresolved lists of hopes and dreams.

It was a study in irony—dozens of people crowded together, all consciously pretending no one else existed.

I touched the neckline of my own shirt—the one I’d so carefully chosen—and wondered about the last time I’d worn something that highlighted more than my self-consciousness.

“People forget sometimes that mothers deserve that time for themselves, too.” Her ridiculous name aside, after that remark, I fell in love with her.

Here’s a fact about motherhood: people aren’t satisfied with one child. The minute you pop out one kid, the entire universe feels entitled to inquire about the state of your uterus all over again.

“It’s ironic because it’s when we’re older—when we’re approaching death and running out of time to live—that we should embrace life. However, most of us do the opposite.”

He smelled like morning, all soap and toothpaste.

But that night, for the first time, it became clear that their humor was simply a cover for something else. Fear, maybe. Or sadness. Regret. Sentiments I understood.

I think my feelings were rooted in my childhood, back when a fresh school year felt like an opportunity to create a new identity. New binders. New wardrobes. New you. It was the perfect time to begin.

“Did it snow?” I shouted once I’d forced the window open. I couldn’t help it. People, by nature, love to ask the most painfully obvious things.

I was constantly seeking out a better, more elevated version of myself, like I could run and catch up with my past identity, even though it was already behind me.

“I don’t take normalcy for granted anymore,” she explained. “As clichéd as it sounds, I take greater value in the simplicity of my daily routine.”

“Today has felt impossibly long,” I said. But that wasn’t really what I meant. What I meant was that some days—like this one—life felt impossibly brief. You blinked and it was over.

“It means you’re already living the dream. But you’re so stuck in the past that you can’t see it.”

Despite the perfect facades we’d all created, maybe we all had shadows. Secret longings. Dreams present in our minds, even when we couldn’t see them. They revealed themselves only when the light in our lives began to shift and our world began to grow dim.

For the moment, I think we both just wanted to believe in the power of happy endings.

At the time, I’d always thought she’d just liked the idea of a celebration. But as I rested on my yoga mat that morning, I finally realized her real intent: she never wanted to spend those sacred days alone.

But in the end, you begin to learn that, despite our many differences, we’re all the same. “Better late than never,” I agreed.

we aren’t born with one life, but with two. The life we live before we understand loss, and the one we finally live once we realize that, despite our many efforts, our life will ultimately end.

That happens as you age. Your friendships become public, all your exchanges taking place in crowded restaurants and coffee shops while a million people walk past. It isn’t like when you were young, your relationships built upon drunken sleepovers and getting dressed for weekends while pressed against the same bathroom vanity, a certain pride felt in knowing which cabinet housed your friend’s wineglasses or where to find her spare key.

That’s another thing that happens with age. Your career just becomes a part of you, as much a piece of your identity as your name.

Through Marian’s gauzy curtains, the city continued to hum, on and on like a party guest who won’t ever leave.

Our block smelled subtly of flowers, as though the whole world had let out one big yawn and then finally begun to bloom again.

Sometimes, you just have to sit quietly with your grief and give it room to breathe. You have to acknowledge that it is a part of you, and that it probably always will be.

“I remember my fortieth.” She turned away from me briefly and looked wistfully at something I couldn’t see. “That was about a million years ago.” A smile emerged across her aging face. “Or yesterday.”

I began to walk. I saw her reflection in every shop window I passed. On every street corner, some reminiscence was there waiting for me. I followed the memories like a bread-crumb trail until they eventually led me to her door.

I’d boiled my entire existence down to bullet points, constantly trying to hurry through my goals so I could cross them out and be done with them. What I’d done was hurry through my life instead.