Is eternity the same as infinite time or is eternity beyond time?

How can time not exist before creation? For God to exist for infinite time before creation, there had to have been some kind of time or time-like object causing -infinity to turn into the time of creation. Wouldn't God have created time before time so there was still time before creation but it may have had different properties? Because eternity into the future is always described as infinite time in the future, but infinite time into the future can't actually happen technically and only approaching the infinite future can happen but never reaching it. So kind of like on a coordinate plane for e-x, where the coordinate plane tries to approach zero but it never actually is able to reach zero unless a value of infinity is placed in the value of x, which can't be shown on a coordinate plane. So is it kind of like the graph that I described in that eternity can never be reached and it doesn't exist at least in the future side, and eternity in the past does exist and has to exist? So does ever-increasing finite time give the illusion of eternity?