Typhoon

A Poem by Invective

Didn't know what to really 'label' this as..

The calm before the storm, the slow realization of the peril that awaits you at the end of the path, the looming dread of love and reliance on another person. The things that cause your stomach to drop at the simple thought of them. You prepare yourself. You hide, you take cover, and you throw up your shield to prevent the onslaught about to reach you. How could something so natural be so maddening? How can the thought of the beautiful destruction keep you up at night, or cause you to drown in your own fear, misery and bottles of alcohol?

The fear of the storm is placed in you after you experience her the first time. The peacefulness and serenity of the situation catches you off guard. Then, before you can react, she hits you like the buffeting winds of the typhoon. You see her beautiful fury unfurled at last and all of a sudden you are helpless, on your knees at her mercy. She can choose to destroy you, or to pick you up and take you along on the ride. The typhoon decides to destroy you. She takes your happiness, your pride, and your faith in her beauty and any shred of temptation you had to worship her along with it.

You learn from your first mistake. You build thicker walls so that they cannot be so easily torn down. You strengthen your foundations so that nothing may tear you away from your sanity once again, being so blinded by her beauty that you can’t see what is about to hit you with the force of a freight train. You build shelters within your mind and your heart, refusing to be drawn out by the coaxing of promises of hope and love. You sit in your self-made fort, and suffer from your self-inflicted loneliness and conflict with choosing to trust the outside world once more or whether the beauty of the storm will capture your heart and mind once more and drag you down into the pits of unhappiness.

As several years pass with only rainstorms to accompany you in your shelter and no sign of another typhoon, you emerge back into the world like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon of its self-hatred and low self-esteem. You take a deep breath of air, and look around to find that what had once been a grand environment filled with friends and laughter and beautiful scenery was now a desolate plain of burnt trees and smoke. You realize that after being in your shelter for so long, you have abandoned those that had once taken pride and pleasure in your company. No matter how strong your defenses towards the typhoon are they also prevented any of the smaller storms that are often taken for granted from reaching you and touching your heart.

The plains of loneliness eventually begin to grow back into what they once were before they had become a hollowed, black wasteland over time. Trees and friends return to your life, and you feel happy once again. But sooner or later you are going to realize that familiar shift in the weather, and feel the wind pick up once again. Your shelter has been removed over the years and your shield is not what it once was, now rusted and stained with the tears you shed all that time ago. The typhoon always returns, and she does not realize the damage that she does to you. But you never move on, and you never seek new ways to stop her. You become so obsessed with the danger she brings that you feel empty if there is nothing to be afraid of, as if your entire life’s purpose is to leave in fear of the inevitable storm.

The wind begins to pick up again. You feel yourself buffeted by her gusts and drop to your knees. Searching frantically in the dirt for the shelter you built so long ago to keep her out, you come to understand that this is not the way that it’s supposed to be. You can’t live in fear of what you can’t control. Eventually you have to stand up to the storm. You have to utilize all of the courage you possess, which may even be minimal amounts due to the years you have spent in solitude. You get back on your feet, and yell at the storm that it is beautiful. You delight in the fact that it has come back, and feel as if there was a purpose for it to still be in your life. No matter how much you accept the storm’s destruction, you’ll always know that you stood up and told her everything you had always felt inside of you. All of the fear and the pain and how you were able to grow from it, but also how it had shown you her true face, and that face is one of crippling beauty that there are no words which can be put into ink on paper or brush to canvas that could begin to paint a vision as to how you see her. Other people may say that she is deadly and that the warpath she creates is no place for you to imagine yourself, but you know deep down that the storm chose you to destroy you out of anybody else, and that the attention she gave you was one of the defining factors in having memory of her.

But the storm will listen to your thoughts, and will choose to rip through your heart and crush your very being. You cannot fight a storm, because it will never find you as beautiful as you found it.