Blink: An Addie LaRue Inspired Reflection

Dear Reader,

Time is a fickle thing. “Blink — and a year is gone. Blink — and five more follow.”

Blink — and you are five years old, sitting in the Early Years Centre, writing The Mouse Goes to Find a Big Piece of Cheese, and illustrating it, too. And then you are starting school.

Blink — and you are fourteen years old, sitting on the steps at the side of the school, staring across the yard at the high school. You cannot believe that you will be there in just a few short months . . . It is everything you have ever dreamed of, having grown up on a diet of books where high school students go on magical adventures and have their first kisses.

Blink — and you are sixteen years old, sitting in the corner across from your locker, eating lunch all alone. You have lost all your friends, abandoned them over vicious jokes, let them float away to people who actually paid attention to them. You are growing increasingly anxious, washing your hands more and more often.

Blink — and you are still sixteen, but now you are sitting in Student Success, surrounded by people who get what it is to be lonely. You are playing games, and you are eating good food, and you are slowly falling for the boy you used to have guitar class with. Then you are sitting in the resource room. You are eating oatmeal, and you are watching Black Panther, and the guitar boy, now your boyfriend, is sitting beside you.

Blink — and you are seventeen, sitting at home in your room, watching as the world collapses around you. You write a book, you start a blog, you grow a relationship . . . but a global pandemic and an ever-lasting quarantine are not all rainbows and tutus.

Blink — and you are still seventeen, but now you are being asked to plan your future. Pick a college, pick a program, pick a job, pick a life. And the longer you stay in quarantine, the longer you go without seeing your loved ones, the longer you go without your normal life and solid answers, the more anxious you become as you realize that your future, which you so meticulously carved out when you were thirteen, has been sanded back down to smooth wood.

“Blink — and a year is gone.” And in that year you have done so much growing and changing and healing. “Blink — and five more follow.” Only to have it undone in a matter of months, a global pandemic knocking you off your feet

Time is a fickle thing.

Love, Magic