Ash fell from the sky like fat, fluffy snowflakes.

Sound buzzed in her ears, quietly at first, an incessant nagging that slowly spread from the dark recesses of her mind, growing louder and louder all the while, until the cacophony was echoing in her mind. She felt the hurt deep down in her bones, and though she could not bring herself to weep, she sensed the fiery tears throbbing behind her eyes, unshed emotion that hunted her like an animal.

She listened intently to the raging storm beyond her, the urgent call from the living to the dead, the helpless cries of children aching in the night. She listened until she felt sick with it, the anger rising in her chest, flush in her face, a curse on her lips. She knew she would seek vengeance that night, would run to the depths of the world to bring justice to the scorned. The atrocities were too much to bear, though she did bear them, with a brutal unkindness, an unforgiving pain that fed the shadows in her heart. She would reap and sow the bloodshed she had witnessed, even if it robbed her of her last, and dearest breath.

And like a knife in her skull, she heard her name, echoing through the vastness, calling to bring her home again, pulling her down, under, until the darkness was crushing her, choking her, smothering and suffocating, and a quiver ran through her body.

“Nila? Nilani! Wake up!”

With a jolt her body was released, the slow, paralyzing fear unwinding from around her muscles, and she sighed in the sudden stillness.

“Rory?” She whispered, her voice thick with exhaustion and that irrefutable tension that never left her side. “Why did you wake me? I was having the most wonderful dream,” she sneered sarcastically. He smiled, that crooked, half smile that she had once loved so much.

“Well, you did seem like you were having a ton of fun in there. Maybe I’ll just let you go back in, see how you do this time eh?” Nila closed her eyes, pushing the dark locks back from her face.

“No, no. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of all the joy. Please, why don’t you go next?” She pushed herself from the modified lounging chair, pulling the needle from her veins as she moved. Her legs felt stiff and awkward, her throat burning with thirst.

She turned to the large mirror at the far end of the room, her sallow reflection standing out amongst the white tiles lining the floor, lining the walls, lining the purpose of her life. Everything looked sickly to her eyes, though she reminded herself that was merely a side effect of the drugs…or so they said.

“Hey! Would it kill you guys to keep me hydrated? Maybe pass me a juicebox at lunch break or something?” She sniggered, eyes devoid of joy.

The loudspeaker crackled and buzzed, followed by a brief pause. She knew the Labcoats were furiously writing about her at that moment, as they had done since she had walked into the hospital all those years ago.

A grainy voice spoke softly through the loudspeaker. She knew him only as The Experimenter.

“Now now Nilani,” he chastised quietly. “You know we take perfectly good care of your shell while you are away. If you are thirsty, you may have a single glass of water. Not too much though, we wouldn’t want you to feel sick.”

She looked down at her meagre gown, the holes in her arms from repeated trials, the scars that would never fade. “I already do,” she whispered.

Rory passed her a tepid glass of stale water. She guessed it had been sitting there since she had been knocked out, and who knew how long that had been? A day? A week? A month? She suppressed a shudder and gulped it greedily. Stale water was better than nothing. It slid down her throat with ease, her cracked lips soothed, and regretted that she had downed it so fast as she stared at the few droplets left in the bottom. She noticed the grainy powder sticking hungrily to the sides, no doubt to quell her noisome personality, and inwardly she shrugged. She immediately felt the drugs flowing through her veins, felt the molten lead spreading from limb to limb, until it reached her beating heart. Slowly, oh so slowly, the beating began to stiffen, until it seemed to her that a decade had passed between beats.

Suddenly, Rory was at her side, and she saw through bleary eyes, that the floor was creeping steadily closer. She watched with detached fascination as her legs swung uselessly on the floor, her arms dangling from side to side as her body was heaved onto the hard, metal chair that had so effortlessly become her prison.

She groaned as the Lab assistant placed another needle in her arm, yellow liquid spurting into her bloodstream, until she could feel the fabric of time, the edges of reality tearing, fading, falling into shadow.

“Rory?” she whispered. It felt as if sawdust were packed into her mouth. “When do the experiments stop?” She wasn’t sure he had even heard her; so long she swayed in that strange limbo, reaching futilely for some semblance of life.

Finally, he leaned close to her ear, and his words sent a chill down her spine. “When you’re dead.”

And then she was being thrust through darkness, hurtled towards something she couldn’t remember and couldn’t forget, the fear rising inside her, panic pressing on her mind.

The ash fell from the sky like fat, fluffy snowflakes.

I’m not going to give some heartfelt rendition of whichever speech is your favourite from that lovable Michael J. Fox film Teen Wolf. This isn’t me reflecting on “what the future means to me,” or a recap of my last dining experience at Future’s restaurant. This is just about the future. That blank slate and giant question mark that a lot of you are probably staring at in the face and thinking, “oh god, what’s next?”

I’ll tell you what’s next: something. Anything. The opposite of sitting there and wondering what’s next. We’ve all done a very good job at looking and naval-gazing and plotting and planning, and done a very bad job at just doing. You learned to ask, “What do I want my future to hold for me?” from Zach Braff films, before forgetting that the future is actually yours. You know what you do with it? Anything! You can do anything that you want. For real. No one is joking. This is real life.

Obviously, knowing what you want to do is hard, and deciding to pursue it is even harder. But life isn’t for just sitting there, wondering and worrying about what the future means. Depending on your religious beliefs (and guess what we’re not going to get into here), you get one of these “lives” and every minute you spend replaying and naval-gazing to the Garden State soundtrack, you lose a chance at achieving your dreams.

Yeah, those things. Those shiny, happy pieces of future that you hope to attain and to nurture, and make into that big, beautiful platform you get to act out your life on. Isn’t that neat? Your dreams can be your future! Those things you want to do? You can actually do them. And yeah, people will say mean things, and they will discourage you, and they will tell you just to get a paycheque, but do you know where those people will be in five years? Who cares! Not in your future, the topic we are all reading about today.

I know, it seems like a trick. It seems like this is just a really long verse of Baz Luhrman’s “Everybody’s Free” that got cut, because who the fuck would put this on the radio? I would, because I better get behind the shit I’m saying. But other than that, no, this isn’t a trick (and no, no one would put this on the radio).
You might be young, you might be old, you might be a 46 year-old man reading this waiting for his wife to finish ordering her damn coffee. I don’t care. It doesn’t make the future being yours any less true.

So do something. Do what you love. Do what you’ve dreamt your whole life of doing. At least try. What’s the worst that can happen? You won’t succeed right away, but then you’ll try it differently and then it will work. Or it won’t, and you’ll realize you want to try something else, and you’ll do that. Just pick up your bags/computer/guitar/dancing shoes/calculator, and go.

The future is now, so the saying goes.

I recall a time
where future was a word
that didn’t make you cringe.
“Start thinking about your future…”
they keep saying.
We thought out it long ago.
Future once meant flying cars and robot friends
when we were kids.
Now we’re lucky if we can even afford a car
that drives on solid ground,
and to have any friends at all
is luxury we still ignore.
We’ve reached a scary age
with our priorities scattered around.
Suddenly it’s not so glamorous.
Does future sound as good
as it once did?
Go argue about that on the internet.

My purple suitcase sits quietly in the corner of my room. Shafts of moonlight seep through my blinds just enough to create an obscure criss-cross pattern on the bags’ surface. It sits innocently, unaware of the journey it will soon be making with me.

I’ve packed and repacked too many times to count. Tried to envision the damp weather that awaits me and how best to be prepared for it. I outwardly stress about not bringing the right number of socks, or how durable my new rain jacket will be. I blame the emptiness of my suitcase on my wardrobe anxieties, but I know the real reason I lie awake late at night watching the moonlight dance across the floor.

When I began to pack a few days ago, the first thing I noticed was the thin layer of sand that coated the bottom of my suitcase. It serves as a reminder of the trip we took together just months before. The sand was the same sand that we laid on underneath the stars, while we talked about life. When I saw it, I felt a pang of guilt at the thought of leaving you behind this time. From that moment, everything I tried to pack reminded me of you. The shirt that I wore on the first night we met. The shoes I wore one night that hurt my feet so badly you carried me home on your back. Everything I tried to stuff into my medium sized, Disney-themed luggage was connected to you somehow, yet it would never be enough to fill the void that was sure to arise in your absence.

I expect that in the months I’m away that things will become different, and this is what I fear most. I expect to learn things about myself that will alter how I perceive the world around me. And although I have great expectations for what awaits me, I can’t ignore the reservations I have about us and what lies ahead. I know you worry too, which is why I’ve decided to make a promise to myself, and ultimately a promise to us.

I promise that I will change. I promise that I will learn new things about the world I will explore, and share them with you as I learn them. While I can’t promise I will be back to see watch you graduate, or to see you turn twenty-three, I promise that I will be thinking only of you in those moments. And although I can’t tell you when I’ll be coming home, I promise that when I do come home, I will come home to you.

The summer really isn’t that long, you know.

When I hear the word ‘future’, I am honestly terrified. As I watch the months pass by, I feel responsibilities and duties mounting; I feel the pressure of graduation, like a noose tightening around the neck of everything I have come to love. I like the feeling of walking around familiar grounds, smiling a greeting at familiar people, and sitting in familiar chairs at the library. I like the constant shifting of what it means to live the ‘school life’ and the changing assignments and the changing priorities; Friday night is Philthy’s, while Monday morning, it’s time to get down to serious business instead of down to the beats. Nevertheless, everyday I am challenged and I am completely free.

I am only in second year. It probably seems absurd that I feel like my days are numbered when there are people graduating in a matter of weeks; some with a clear vision of their newfound adult-esque autonomy, and others probably with their palms sweating heavily around their diploma. Age considerations aside, I can confidently say time seems to fly by for all of us. Sometimes when I’m in the dining hall, watching first years come to terms with their new lives and independence, I wish I could tell them it gets so much better, and simultaneously, always a little worse. Some people may phrase this as just ‘different’ rather than attributing a negative connotation to the change, but those people are usually guidance councilors.

I remember when my biggest concerns had to do with dodging my don, and how there was never anything to eat on Sunday nights. Now, as I struggle with my progression requirements for my program and trying to find a job for my first co-op term, my problems definitely seem like they have more significance. But I also have a more significant life; the future of the nervous, overwhelmed first year I was, ironically included a couple of new executive positions around campus, a vast variety of new experiences and a whole new batch of friends for my weekend plans.

I have grown as a person, and there is perhaps nothing more exciting or satisfying than that. As I watch some of my older friends take pictures with a graduation gown and apply to leave their home away from home for the past 4 years, I can see that they have grown as well. Perhaps the future is terrifying, but once upon a time, it was the past and you were a lot less equipped to deal with the change than you currently are in the present.

While I cannot pretend that I am completely relieved and relaxed regarding the end of my school career, I can honestly say that I am excited to know who I will become after another two years surrounded by the people and school I love. Perhaps after graduation, I will find new familiar grounds at a job I adore, and I will smile at my old roommates over a coffee date. There are so many possibilities out there; I currently can proudly say that I capitalized on a lot of amazing opportunities I did not even know about last year. And there is always the silver lining to any cloud; past the point of graduation, there is a sudden dearth of exams you might not pass.

Thinking about the future is a terrifying thing for most people. Until I began my third year of university, I thought I had my future plans solidified. When I applied to university, I had the intention of continuing my education and planned to attend teacher’s college. That plan has since fallen through. I used to be someone who knew what they were going to do with their life, someone who had a concrete plan, and knew all the steps to get somewhere. I no longer hold that certainty, and it still frightens me. But learning to live with doubt about the future is something I have had to accept, as my own personality and goals shift into a shrouded path. For the first time in my life, my plans and hopes for the future are unstable, but I am slowly learning to appreciate this apprehension.

Since I was a child, I have associated myself with creative writing. When I revisited this passion in September and realized I could pursue further education of it at the Master’s level, my life seemed to illuminate with hope. Ever since I realized that a Master’s in creative writing might shape my future, it has been the topic of heavy debate in my family. They ask questions such as, “What kind of job is that going to get you?” or “What will you get out of that?” But the issue shouldn’t be what I will get out of it. That’s the least of my worries. To me, the most important aspect of this epiphany is the realization that this will make me happy. I don’t know what will happen to me if I choose to pursue a career in creative writing; it can be rather competitive. But when I feel so strongly about something I was born to do I feel like I cannot fail. I’ve had to remind myself that I don’t actually know what will happen should I follow that path, and I’m learning to live with that uncertainty about the future.

I realize that it doesn’t matter what countless other voices are telling me to do; my own is the loudest and strongest of them all. It is my future, and I know what is best for me. Creative writing is just one of many possibilities for my future, and not knowing about it right away is not something to be ashamed of. Rather, doubt about the future is something to be proud of. It shows that we as humans are concerned with the lessons we will learn from new adventures.

Despite all that is unfortunate for us, it’s important to remember that there will always be those people you can have faith in forever. Only we can decide what to do with the pain inside us, and whether or not we will use it to go backwards or forwards. The time that we spend on people that mattered only mattered then, but you can still relish the fact that the person ever mattered to you at all. Even if you do the most work in something you love and it doesn’t get you very far, at least the work was done with good hands and a good mind. When someone else is wrong about your future—or even theirs—sometimes it’s best to just let them discover it for themselves. Be humble. No matter how busy our lives may get, it is essential that we keep our creative minds active and follow our dreams; it is part of the reason why so many people are not inspired to do anything incredible anymore.

Learn to appreciate who you are and where you might go with your life. Listen to your heart, because it is often stronger than your brain. If I had listened to my brain’s logic of doing what others wanted, I wouldn’t be writing this now. I would have become robotic and lived an unhappy life. I realize that my

It started to dawn on me around hour six of waiting that I might not make it through this. A temperature of 38 degrees and liver pain was enough to get me to the hospital, but not enough to get me seen with any measure of speed. I did not feel that I was going to die immediately; I had been living with this pain for almost a month now, and I was starting to forget what life was like when I was healthy. I thought of the bucket list I had jokingly compiled just after New Years’, and wondered if they would still let me skydive while doubled over in pain. This dramatic turn in my thinking was mostly due to the illness, and the boredom of spending six hours in a waiting room.

Yet, the mystery I presented to doctors was beginning to unnerve me. Doctors had appeared at the door during my previous hospital visits, and poked and prodded me in all manner of places and taken what felt like several pints of blood. They listened to my heart, my lungs, asked about my bowels, took ultrasound and x-ray pictures. Yet even with these detailed maps, they still could not find the source of pain, which had established a beachhead in some organ midway up the right side of my torso and was content to fight a guerilla campaign against my immune system. So here I am again, occasionally thrashing, but mostly just trying to keep comfortable in the waiting room chairs, while keeping my writhing to a low as it may unnerve the other people in the waiting room.

And what a motley menagerie I seemed to be a part of; what company I had to share this late night in the emergency room with. Moving clockwise from the wall that I was slumped against were new parents with their infant daughter. I had assumed that they had come because of their baby, who was sleeping soundly, yet they tragically had seated themselves underneath a television showing a program about custody battles. While they seemed oblivious to the television, it loomed over the couple and their newborn daughter. The next group was a rather healthy looking man who was accompanied by his girlfriend, and his mother. The only reason I knew he was sick was that after long periods of silence one of them would ask how he was feeling, to which he would always answer “It’s okay, I’m fine”.

Sitting behind them were my favourite pair: and elderly gentleman and his wife. They both sat upright and rarely ever fidgeted or fussed; occasionally, the woman would reach over and squeeze her husband’s hand reassuringly. Whatever illness they were facing they did it together, and even if their prospects were grim, I knew they would face their final moments with poise. Finally, sitting across from me, was a man accompanied by his wife who had brought his elderly mother in. The poor woman did not appear to be very sick, but she was senile; every now and again, she would look around dazed and her son would ask her if she knew where she was. The resemblance between the two was striking, and though they had been here longer than I had, he never left her side.

It was like an airport terminal, except we were all going to the same place, and while the machines were exotic, it was doubtful that anyone wanted to be there at all. Crueler even was the triage process, which had given each of us a grade that reflected our level of illness. Although waiting was a labour, the destination was no better, and a quick trip often meant you were the sickest of the bunch; a bad time to be the top of the class.

The nurse came out and called for myself and the senile woman, and as I sat in a room it had taken me six hours to get to. I wondered where I would be in another six.

There’s a version of myself that I love to pay tribute to: the thirteen-year-old version. She is a spritely little figure who is still very much alive in the back of my mind. I feed her occasionally with viewings of her favourite movies (Center Stage and Dumb and Dumber), the consumption of Tim Hortons hot chocolate, and long hours of listening to Radiohead’s earlier work. I still own at least one article of clothing from those days – a pair of red short-shorts – that I don whenever I need a friendly reminder of the little, nagging voice in my head.

It’s important that I keep this past version of myself alive. I value the opinion of my thirteen-year-old self and hold her in the highest regard. She was opinionated to the point where she lost friends, and she was judgmental and strong-willed as the day was long (and boy, they were long back then). She alienated people on a daily basis, but kept a fiercely tight hold on those closest to her. She loved and she was loved back. She was a lot like her twenty-two-year-old self, except that her naivety and strong will left her with no questions, big or small. It’s a far cry from the woman who second-guesses herself on every decision, from which career to choose to which flavour of tea she should get.

Thirteen-year-old me loved to picture herself in the future, and I would lie if I said that she never once pictured a pretentious, bitter version of herself hunched over a laptop in a coffee shop, a pensive look on her face and a comically large cup of tea by her side. In fact, I would also be lying if I said that she never pictured an English student with a penchant for scarves, newspapers, the occasional whiskey drink, and soft indie rock playlists.

In fact, while I would love to be the bitter young adult and say that I am everything that my past self hoped I would never turn into, I have to admit that I am living my tween self’s underwhelming vision of the future.

When thirteen-year-old me looked into the future, she never made overarching promises about never drinking alcohol or “saving it” until marriage. She did, however, vow to never “go too crazy” or live a life of excess. And I guess not setting particularly high standards for the future allowed me to never disappoint myself too drastically. Thirteen-year-old me actually wished for quite the boring future, though she never quite realized it. I wouldn’t necessarily be proud to have my thirteen-year-old self meet her twenty-two-year-old counterpart, but the meeting would probably be a comforting one.

But I’m not sure if, at thirteen, I was able to consider that “the future” would not arrive all at once but would slowly seep in like a viscous liquid as the years brought about subtle-yet-torturous changes. For me it was years of dark secrets that piled themselves up until they weighed me down, taste tests of every drug available and “experiments” for which I was not ready – not by years. Somehow I reached a point where things stabilized and I managed to “settle down.”

Like my thirteen-year-old self, I still don’t quite understand that the future is fluid. When I instruct myself to picture the future, I picture a finished product, a static figure. I would love to believe that my life is easily divided into neatly packaged, clearly defined chapters. Which is why I keep coming back to the thirteen-year-old me and the twenty-two-year-old me, and pretending that the years in between are merely strings loosely tying the two stages together and have earned nothing more than an afterthought.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that were how it really is?

By 2014 I want to be living in Montreal, grabbing coffees and naming my pet pig, dying my hair colors and being a graduate student. I want to soak up French-Canadian culture, meet wacky people, and fully enjoy being a twenty-something woman. I want to improve my writing skills, and I want to sing everyday. I want to have a strong sense of self. I want to learn about healthy eating habits, and how to use basic French in everyday conversations. I want to connect with the natural and the magical. I want to receive flowers. I want to give flowers away, and smile at everyone. I want to be hairy by letting everything grow, even in the summer. I want to discover new moles and new sides to my ever-changing psyche. I want to learn about the sun and the moon. I want to seek solitude. I want to seek friendship. I want to seek sisterhood. I want real tattoos, fake tattoos, to be kissed and kiss in return. And lastly, I want to be in love with me, and after that, you.

It is how we react within the outcome of change that defines us as individuals. When we allow ourselves to learn, grow, and change, we become stronger and more aware of ourselves. It is a personal choice in how we tackle life and we can either change with it, or be moved aside by it. Only once we have accepted the gravity of change can we begin to calm some the surrounding tidal waves.

I cannot change your tone of your voice, or words you choose to use, but I can change how I listen or whom I listen to. I cannot change the times, but I know how to appreciate the importance of being heard. I cannot change that I still love her, but I can change the way love myself. I cannot change that I’m still dealing with consequences of a past I thought I’d left behind, but somehow life found a lesson I had missed and I’m being pulled back though corridors and calamities. I cannot change the fact that my best friend has cancer, but I can make a stand with her and fight this unwelcome intruder at her side.

Positivity attracts itself, and it seems to be an underestimated practice that deserves more attention in today’s world of obsessive cynicism. Although I have always tried to be positive with advice to friends, I have not always pertained this knowledge into my own lifestyle. The mantra of positivity seemed unrealistic and made me nauseous. But my mother falling ill changed me. We surround our lives with endless clichés and hollow aphorisms that only seem to gain substance when they hit close to home. What do you do, when change becomes a branch of heartache? Do you let it take the time you do have? This moment? Or appreciate it knowing you are being changed forever?