Tiaras and Tenacity

The Avalanche.

Posted tiarasandtenacity on October 20th, 2009 | Filed under metaphor

It starts with a moment.  Well, let me rephrase.  It starts with many small moments which gradually collect, cohesive and momentous, a snowball of moments all shooting straight down the mountain and you standing at the foothills, completely unaware.

The first time you couldn’t ride a roller coaster.  The first time someone who thought you were amazing online stopped returning your phone calls after the first date.  The last time you fit into your favorite jeans. The time you glanced sideways at the dinner table and noticed how large you were in hallway mirrored door.

*whhrrrsh*

It took three tries to get up from the couch yesterday.

*whrrrsh whhhrrsssh*

The doctors eyes, filled with pity as his voice rang hollow in the examination room.  “You’re so pretty, but you’re going to die like this.”

*Whhhrrrrsssshhhhhhh*

Laying awake at night because I truly believe that I’m suffering a heart attack and will never see my son again.

*WHHHHHHSSSSSSSHHHHHH*

Never being 100% in love because I’m too afraid of not being good enough.  Suspicion, jealousy, misplaced anger. From the outside, I just look like a bitch.  When no one is looking, I am falling apart.

*WHHHSSSSHHHHHHH*

The feeling that it’s too late.

*rumble*

SPLAT!

And then it hits you… This is it.  This is the avalanche that moves you forward.  If I’d been turned towards the mountain, I think it may have crushed me right where I stood.  But I was looking for a way out, staring somewhere in the distance and it hit me with a force strong enough to move one foot in front of the other, something I was never able to do before.

Oh sure, I tried jumping from start to finish.  I tried kicking, screaming, crying, wishing and holding my breath.  But placing one foot in front of the other?  My god, that would take too long.  Time was not on my side.  And yet, and yet–I’d had the better part of my 31 years to do nothing.  To run in place and slash my wrists and bite and yell and scream about the injustice of needing to move in the first place.  But never enough time to move forward, slowly and shaking.

The avalanche pushed me forward, but it is my own two feet that will carry me out of the shadow of this mountain and into the sunshine where I belong.

Today, I will walk.