Childhood time is circular. Seasons repeat without urgency. Days loop and blend.

Childhood time is circular. Seasons repeat without urgency. Days loop and blend. You don’t “lose” time; you just exist inside it.

Then somewhere — often around adolescence — time snaps into a line. A progression. A conveyor belt. A deadline machine.

I remember the moment the loop broke for me: freshman year of high school, walking home after basketball practice, the streetlights flickering on. Suddenly I understood: I was older now, and tomorrow I’d be older again, and childhood wasn’t coming back.

It wasn’t sad. It was disorienting — like discovering gravity.

Time became something you could run out of.