Time Isn't Linear (At Least, Not Anymore)

Growing up, I thought of time the way most people do.

A neat line. A progression. Morning, noon, night.
Birth, childhood, adulthood, old age.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Tick, tick, tick.
Forward, forward, forward.

But after my trauma, that line snapped.

And suddenly, time wasn’t neat anymore.

It wasn’t something I could hold onto, measure, or predict. It twisted. Doubled back. Looped. It flooded over me at strange angles.
Some days felt ten minutes long. Some moments stretched into forever.

And in that breaking, something inside me changed too.

I don't believe time is linear anymore. Not really. Not the way we pretend it is.

And maybe, just maybe, it never really was.

How Trauma Bends Time

If you’ve lived through something that shook you to the core, you know this feeling.

• A second of terror that feels like an hour.

• Weeks passing by where you barely register the days.

• Memories bubbling up from nowhere, as if the past is right here in the room with you.

Trauma doesn't just break your heart and shatter your soul. It fractures your clock.

I used to think healing was about "getting back on track."

Getting back to that neat little timeline I’d lived on before.

But healing didn’t feel like walking forward. It felt like falling sideways.

It felt like living three timelines at once:

• The "before" me.

• The "after" me.

• The "still becoming" me.

All layered on top of each other. All very much alive.

The Moment It Hit Me

I came to this realization one day during an EMDR therapy session.

In the middle of the session, I was suddenly pulled into a memory I hadn't touched in years: I was fourteen years old, staying at a haunted hotel in Italy. My dad was sleeping in the bed next to me. It was around 3AM when the water in the bathtub turned itself on.

I was terrified back then. I froze under the covers, trying to make sense of it. And in the middle of that fear, a thought popped into my head:
"Maybe William is taking a bath."

It made no sense to me at fourteen. I shook it off, thinking it was just a random, childish thought born from fear.

But sitting there as an adult in that EMDR session, remembering that exact moment with perfect clarity, it gave me chills.

Because I hadn’t met William until I was twenty-nine years old. And his explosive death in front of me happened when I was thirty.

How could I have thought his name…his name…all those years before he even entered my life?

Maybe time isn't a straight line. Maybe everything, every love, every grief, every crossing of paths, is already flowing, already echoing through us, long before we know.

After my trauma, there was another thread that didn't make sense until much later.

I became obsessed with finding Zak, my now-husband.

We had only met twice before. Barely enough to even call it knowing each other.

But something in me knew. He was the only person I felt safe around. The only one who didn't overwhelm me, scare me, or make my nervous system spark in panic.

It made no logical sense. But somewhere deep inside the folds of time, some part of me already recognized him. Already trusted him.

Maybe, just like the haunted hotel memory, his presence was always echoing toward me.
Waiting for the right moment to become real.

Maybe Time Was Never Linear At All

The more I sat with this, the more I wondered:

Maybe time isn’t a straight road. Maybe it’s a river.

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes carrying things from upstream that you thought you'd long left behind.

Maybe when we say "time heals," we don't mean that time moves forward. Maybe we mean that we learn to float differently inside it.

Maybe we learn to touch the memories without drowning. Maybe we learn to visit the future without fear.

Maybe we learn that all the selves we have ever been, (scared, strong, broken, blooming) are still swimming somewhere inside us. And that’s okay.

The Strange Gifts of Living Outside Linear Time

There are strange, almost holy gifts that come when you stop believing time is a straight arrow.

1. Grief Softens, Not Hardens

You realize grief isn't a place you "leave" after a set number of months. It’s a tide that comes and goes. And it’s okay to feel it rise again sometimes. It doesn’t mean you’ve "failed" at healing. It just means you’re human.

2. Joy Becomes More Precious

Because if time isn't guaranteed to move forward predictably, then every beautiful moment is a miracle. Every laugh. Every sunrise. Every hand held.

They’re not just "steps along the path." They’re little worlds unto themselves.

3. Hope Feels Different

Instead of racing toward some perfect future version of yourself, you start planting hope like seeds. Small. Scattered. Ready to bloom when the season is right.

Even if you don’t know exactly when. Even if you never see all of them grow.

You plant them anyway. Because you understand now that time isn’t a straight shot. It’s a garden. Wild and strange and beautiful.

How I Anchor Myself When Time Feels Fluid

Living outside of strict clock-time can feel disorienting some days.

Here’s what helps me:

1. Journaling Without Pressure

I keep a soft leather journal next to my bed (this beautiful refillable journal is my favorite).
Not a "productivity tracker." Not a "five-year plan." Just a place where I spill fragments of thought:

• Things I loved today.

• Things that hurt today.

• Things that felt timeless today.

It gives shape to the shapeless. Without forcing it.

2. Creating Tiny Rituals

Lighting a candle at night. Drinking tea slowly in the morning. Watering a plant and noticing how its leaves stretch toward the light.

Not because I’m "measuring" my days. But because these tiny rituals remind me:

I exist.
I’m here.
In this moment.
And that’s enough.

3. Giving My Nervous System a Place to Land

When my mind starts to slip through time, back to old wounds, forward to imagined disasters, I use grounding tools.

One simple thing that helps?
A weighted eye mask.
It’s small, soft, and calms my whole body faster than anything else.

Because sometimes, you need your body to remind your mind: "We are here now. We are safe. We are still becoming."

Time Is a River, and You're Still Swimming

If you’re reading this, maybe you feel it too.

Maybe you’ve stopped trying to make sense of the calendar. Maybe you’ve stopped pretending healing is a straight staircase upward.

Maybe you’re living in the swirl of memory and hope and ache and wonder.

And if you are?

You're not lost. You're just outside the clock.

You're in the river. Learning to float. Learning to breathe. Learning that time isn't the enemy.

It’s the ocean you're still swimming through. The one that has carried every broken, blooming version of you. And will keep carrying you.

Forward.
Backward.
Sideways.

Into a future that's not a straight line. But something far more beautiful.

A spiral. A song. A life.