During my 5th birthday party, I watched my dad blink after I had blown out the candles.
I shouldn’t have noticed it; I should’ve been looking at the cake I was about to eat.
I should’ve run off the table and played with my friends in the living room.
My eyes should’ve been locked onto the new toy I would eventually unwrap later that day.
But I saw him blink.
He didn’t blink the way he normally did.
It was a fraction of a second slower.
Slow enough that even my barely not infant brain could notice it, but fast enough that he couldn’t have done it intentionally.
After I had seen him do that, I noticed everyone started blinking like that.
Once I was ten, I noticed that it wasn’t the only thing that slowed down.
The leaves fell quicker, almost like the air had gone thicker.
I asked my mom if she saw it too, but she looked at me confused.
“What do you mean?” she had said, “The leaves always feel like that.”
I remember paying attention to how she talked.
It was slower, more blurred together.
The cars on the road, while still speeding past, were slower.
I could tell the tires moved.
They were less blurry when they moved, their disks being easier to make out as they spun.
When I walked I had to pass people on the street because they didn’t move fast enough.
They would shoot me dirty looks as if I was inconveniencing them.
Sometimes I got so conscious of the difference that I tried to match their speed and walk behind them.
But I found the effort to be great, and I eventually had to give up.
I could feel myself push against the very stillness of the air as if it had thickened to water.
When I was 18 I got my first job, and I hoped that life on the retail floor would make my life seem quicker.
The description said that it was a job that required me to be ready for anything on a dime’s notice, and I was ready.
At first, I found myself struggling to keep pace with everyone else.
However, a few months later, I moved quicker than I could comprehend.
The conveyor belts moved sluggishly, and it took me only several minutes to walk across the entire store and back.
It was maddening, especially when I had made a mistake and it took what felt like years for the manager to walk to me and tell me what I had done.
I felt like I was in a fast-paced action movie, but all I did was bag food and move carts.
I tried busying my mind with the mundane, memorizing made-up songs and imagining an 8 season show about a scientist’s attempt to cure an alien virus.
Eventually, I quit, deciding to focus on school.
Schoolwork went from a day-to-day race to deadlines.
Once every assignment had a designated finish date, I finished it weeks before the due.
Boredom overwhelmed me, sitting on my couch watching the clock tick away the seconds.
I could feel the dust land on me as I sat forever on that couch for a few minutes.
I would wait days for the wash to finish cleaning my clothes for an hour, and my parents would typically be gone for a week until I saw them again that evening.
Now I am 26, and I sit down at my desk, writing this letter.
The phone calls I made to my mom lasted hours, but when I checked the clock it was only 15 minutes.
I am only scheduled for 8 hours a day, but the time between my arrival and leaving my workplace could last a year.
The only thing that seems to catch up with me is me.
My relationships have ended, simply moving forward quicker each time.
The last girlfriend I had was the only one that I decided to break up with since I was quicker to pull the trigger.
They couldn’t match my pace in anything, holding hands dragged me down and I could not accomplish anything when I had to slow down for them.
Even as I saw them begin to cry into their hands, by the time tears ran down her face I was already back at home.
The car lights in the dark stretch out as people drive by me on the sidewalk.
My eyes follow the rain to the ground, colliding with the cement and exploding into millions of watery shards.
If the electrical cords were clear, I could see the electricity from the outlet move to my television.
It would take 5 minutes.
If you’re reading this letter, I am probably miles from here.
I am leaving on Christmas, walking as far as I can go and seeing how long a day gets me.
After that, I am walking for another day.
And then another.
I will keep walking until time simply stops, or I find a place as fast as I am.
Nothing entertains me anymore.
Movies move frame by frame, too choppy for my eyes to be tricked.
Reading has gone from taking days for a book to minutes.
If I put my heart to it I could finish a library’s collection of novels in 36 hours.
Even the physical pleasures of the world such as drugs or sex are too slow for me to process.
The dopamine takes so long to travel to my brain that by the time it's there, I am waking up for work the following day.
There is something wrong with me, or maybe the world, but it’s clear I cannot live in it anymore.
I hope I can find a place, a better place.
Somewhere that keeps up with my thoughts, and allows me the visual illusions of a sunset.
Or maybe I will outpace the world and walk freely among the world that can no longer see me because they cannot perceive what I live.
Maybe I’ll just die.
Although I’m sure it would be a slow death, my own soul failing to catch up.
I don’t know.
Whoever you are, I hope it's still the same hour since you started this letter.
If you’re like me, I have no answer.
But I know one thing.
We cannot stay in a world that forces us to slow down for the rest of it.
There must be a place for people like us.
Maybe it’s another world.
Maybe it's one where I can breathe as slowly as the rest of them.
Or maybe the world will just turn to a static image, turning me into a god amongst statues.
I will find it, wherever it might be.
And I hope you find it too.
See you there,
Garcia Mondelēz
End.