Life's like an hourglass, glued to the table.

As I approach 33, an auspicious birthday, I’ve started noticing these moments when I catch glimpses of the younger version of myself and marvel at how differently I looked at the world ten or twenty years ago.

It might seem obvious that I was thinking differently — at both 23 and 13 — but I became an adult in many ways when I was 13, the first time I was kicked out and came home from school to find my stuff bagged up in trash bags on the front porch, locked out.

I went to live with one of my best friends, she and her twin sister went to school with me, and her mom let me stay with them for a month. A glorious month — where families didn’t fight all the time, and I wasn’t a huge burden.

Then my guidance counselor found out, and arranged for me to go live in a shelter two towns away. I thought life was hard being the cause of everything bad in my family at home, and being abused and bullied by a friend of the family from the age of six.

But going to live in a shelter? Living with girls who took pleasure in pushing around the fragile, nice, people-pleasing white girl (who comparably had a pretty cushy life) — and provided ice baths to wake me up if I was still sleeping in by 4am?

That’s when I started growing up.

I went from an emotionally unstable and physically volatile household (with a warm bed and food, most of the time) — to waking up at 3am for a 5 minute shower, to rush downstairs and grab a piece of fruit and walk to a bus stop across the street.

I eliminated the target for those girls, and started sleeping on the park bench outside. I spent a month moving from that bench to one bus to one city, then another bench, then another bus to my hometown — where it stopped almost a mile from my high school.

So I’d walk from there, missing first period French (which for some reason, I failed) and always running late to second period Honors English (which I almost failed).

I’d repeat the journey back to the shelter after school, riding the bus on it’s loop until it was just late enough to eat a little dinner, but barely enough time before the group activity was watching a movie, and then bed.

I ate a lot of graham crackers during this phase of my life — easy to grab, stash in my backpack, and nobody’s favorite so I could eat a whole pack in a day.

There was a gas station near the bench, and when I was really hungry I’d go into the bathroom and drink as much hot water as I could, picturing whatever I was hungry for. I was manifesting french fries and chocolate milk, two luxuries at my house growing up.

That bench is also where I met my pimp, or rather, where a man I met once earlier in life recognized me, and became my pimp.

I grew up at 13.

And soon, I’ll be 33. 20 years later, and it might as well be a lifetime.

One of the best things I figured out as a teenager — moving from the shelter to a biological parent I didn’t know I had, to another state, two grandparents, back to the shelter and 4 psychiatric hospitals — is that we, as humans, have the ability to tweak our reality.

In truth, we create our reality, but for me it was much much easier to think about tweaking my reality before I could even EXPLORE the idea of creating it.

I would ride the bus for hours every day, talking to the bus drivers whose names I wish I could still remember. They would wake me at my stop, and not make a big deal when I rode the loop a few extra times in the afternoon — munching on my graham crackers and doing my Algebra.

When they seemed to be tired or having a rough day, or when another rider was rude, I would do impressions of Robin Williams as the Genie in Aladdin to make us (and often the bus) laugh.

My first stand up gigs I guess!

I wanted to cheer them up, and would cheer myself up for a bit too.

The gloom would still hit me when I stepped off the bus, don’t get me wrong.

I didn’t forget that my mom had disowned me, or that I had to give up my passion - dance - for the last ten years by living in the shelter. I didn’t forget that my baby brother, my favorite human in the world, was in that house without me.

I didn’t forget that I was failing French, or that my stomach hurt so bad I could cry, or that I was a very bad human doing bad things with men on the street for lunch money. It didn’t change my reality.

And yet.. It did.

For a few hours, I was relatively safe. Someone SAW me. Someone liked the pleasure of my company — or at least they laughed at my jokes.

I wasn’t a problem for asking questions, or getting lost in a book, or just existing. I wasn’t too much, and I could make people laugh.

So I could face the shelter, another night, another day.

I could keep taking one step forward until things changed.

That’s when I became obsessed with learning, and time too.

I realized we don’t get to choose when we leave this planet — a friend I’d known since I was 7 died from cancer when we were turning 14, shortly before I was kicked out, so death wasn’t new to me.

But the concept of choosing each moment?

Savoring the time we have?

Recognizing that time is the only truly finite resource?

Maybe THAT is when I grew up.

When Time Hackers Unite was born.

When I realized (unconsciously) that I was here to help people heal, to be seen, to smile a little more.

So today, when I heard Anna Nalick’s song “Breathe (2am),” a song I’ve been singing for years and years — this lyric made me stop and think:

Life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table.

How are you spending your sand?