The Storm

You don’t have a choice.  This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to come to terms with.  The narrative of our lives has always been one of choice, choose what flavour you want, choose who you want to look like, choose your path, choose your destiny.  You can be anything, do anything, go anywhere, as long as you want it bad enough and work even harder.  We trudge along this course in irons against unrelenting wind of circumstance, and despite our best efforts and undying unwillingness to accept the nature of this world, there is no stopping the storm, all you can do is brace yourself, and too often we trade vigilance for false comfort in thinking we have a say in any of this.

This is my sin.  My admission of guilt.  That I let myself get too comfortable in this beaming brightness to remember what the dark even looks like.  But the moon is as unstoppable as the sun, and eventually a reminder of its coming becomes a looming truth, a time come, a falling darkness.

I can’t kid myself, pretend like I didn’t see this coming.  I’ve always been one high up on the lookout knowing those rolling clouds will someday come for us, ready to scream and shout at the top of my lungs to warn us all to remember what is always waiting.  Even in my deepest ignorance there was a voice in my head screaming, dying to be heard, warning me that there wasn’t much time left.  But I was too scared to listen to him, to admit the truth he told.

I suppose I thought it was finally time to rest my guard, to lay this burden down on the ground, to tuck away my vigilance somewhere I know it would be waiting for me when I needed it.  My vision tunneled, my restless thoughts took ease, and that shimmering beautiful thing let me see myself in a light I’ve long forgotten.  Such a sight is one you get lost in, you forget yourself, the world around you dissolves into a void and all you have left is this beautiful golden shine, the very thing we fight so hard to find our whole lives.

The storm is clever though, it has nothing to get lost in, no love to cause it to dither, it only has time to lie in wait for moments like these, and it knows exactly when to bear down on you, when it thinks it can break you.

Some give up in its wake quickly, they bend and twist, they break and cower under its violent lashes.  Others stand up tall like a proud palm as if to say to these winds “give me your best shot”.  Both are fools, because sometimes the only way out, is to know when to run…