V is for Vortex

vortex: -noun; a whirling mass, something regarded as drawing into its powerful current everything that surrounds it

An entire decade went by. I had scrambled over the cold, hard, sharp rocks of my youth and found a place that was a warm, gray, comforting mist. It was like lying down in the sauna after a grueling workout. I wanted to stay there forever.

It was an okay place to land, but a horrible place to stay. I was complacent and apathetic. I let the world go by. I let living take a backseat to existing.

I was caught in a vortex. A whirling, sucking vortex. I was swirling the drain.

It was so easy to do. I didn't even realize what was happening. I only know that I woke up one day and felt like I had an electrical current running through my veins. I looked around and there was no color in my life - everything was gray. And I thought, "How did I get here? What the fuck am I doing?!"

It took a fight to get away from that place. I had to swim sideways before I could start swimming up. It didn't happen over night. It didn't happen without hard work and pain. You think childbirth is hard on the mother? Try being the baby!

I vowed never to return to that place. I'd rather have reality, in all its harshness, and live within my life, than be in a place so comfortable that it shrouds me. Never again. Do you hear me?!

The following poem is what I wrote shortly after escaping the worst of the suck.

Vortex

I

did not

expect this

washed grey unawake

emptied nothing, slanted

meandering thru ageless days

that melt slowly at the seams of

every tomorrow spent waiting for

something, the something that won’t come unless

sought, the something that won’t pay unless bought, it

is time past time to reach, move, crane, turn, journey, cross

to that something, to grasp it firmly by its tail, which is slippery

but can be had, to haul it into and be hauled into every wide awake

non-dreaming, undying moment of days that are only, only tomorrows

never yesterdays, it is a moment beyond the moment when you’ve

blinked unbelievingly then missed the magic perfection that you

know happened just as you blinked and no amount of

screaming or cursing will bring it back and oh

if only you hadn’t blinked or opened

your eyes again because you

did not expect this

washed grey

unawake

emptied

nothing

© Barbara Ann Black, 2010-2011