Author: Veronica Foale

A drop falls on my hand and I look at it, mildly annoyed. Shaking my hand, I continue with my evening, my hand slightly damp.

This is how it starts. A drop falls and leaves a wet patch that chafes and irritates me.

A second drop falls, followed shortly after by a cup of water thrown on my head. Gasping, I look around, soaked to the shoulders and wondering where it came from.

Before I know it, I’m in the middle of an icy ocean, fully clothed and wondering where the fuck my shore is. Shaking, cold, I swim towards the light until I can drag myself out of the water, to stand, dripping and shivering; sand caking between my toes as my teeth chatter a rhythym.

That is how it ends.

The trigger is something different each time:

A waft of perfume;

a photo on the wall;

a stray thought that I can’t shake.

A trigger that once pulled, drags me towards it’s culmination.

Sometimes, I walk silently, waiting for the drip.

Other times, I scream and wail; kicking and screaming like a child.

I’m BUSY. Can’t you see I’m busy? I don’t have time to swim right now.

FUCK YOU.

It’s inevitable; the drip.

This is what soul pain is. It starts with a drip and ends with a slow icy slog towards shore, knowing that you’re going to be cleaning sand out of your toes for days.

And you never know what your trigger will be until it hits you, like a brick wall at high speed.

SLAP.

No thought for what you were doing, suddenly you’re swimming.

Again.

Stop.

Just stop,

Take your moment; this moment and stop. Breathe in and savour the smells of living and stop thinking, because the world is likely to overpower you with its wrongness.

With the wrongness of a 6 year old not knowing what a tomato was, with the wrongness of a chicken living 39 days from birth to slaughter, with the wrongness of oil spilling into the Gulf and the cheers when the leak is stopped, but why are we cheering? Aren’t there still eleventy million barrels of oil floating on the water down there? Aren’t there still pelicans suffering and turtles being burned and a journalistic silence being held?

Why are we smiling?

Because it could have been worse.

Worse? It is worse. THIS is the worse.

When the spill was stopped, we shouldn’t have cheered. It was not a success. It was a chance to just stop and breathe out.

In relief.

In disgust.

No cheers, because things are still broken. Stopping the spill is not better.

Things are not suddenly fixed.

The wrongness is still there, lurking under the surface, tainting the smell of seagulls with a darker undercurrent.

When hormones can produce you a chicken for eating in 39 days, we should not be cheering for profit margins and congratulating ourselves on a faster turnover. When did people become removed from suffering? When did we become so overloaded with wrong that we couldn’t see for the dark? When did humans lose their humanity?

But, but there’s too much. I … I can’t.

Stop.

Just stop.

Take measure of where you are and breathe deeply.

When the tipping point comes, when you say ENOUGH and you stop.

Then stop.

{source}