Powerless
It’s intimidating. Something in the way they look at you. So penetrating that you can feel your soul start to quiver. So intensely that you start to wonder if anything else in the room even exists, as if everyone else in the world doesn’t move or interact or breathe unless you’re watching it happen. It’s the feeling that – whether they’re standing right in front of you, close enough to feel their breath, or whether they’re across the room with eye contact as the only true connection – they know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what you’re wishing. Because they have the ability to just reach out to grab it. If they wanted something of yours, you know you wouldn’t dare put up a fight – you’d just hand it over to them, and let them do what they wanted with it – no matter the intentions. In fact, as much as you want to think you’d demand a certain level of respect and consideration, you don’t care if they throw it out the window, so long as they held it in their hands for a brief moment in time.
The way they move forces you to react like a magnet, constantly reassessing your physical orientation to complement theirs perfectly – just in case they choose to close the distance. Time seems to slow to the point that, for a few moments you can see a raindrop make it’s path down the stem of a flower and into the soil. You can see the embers ignite and die out at the end of a cigarette. You get to witness an individual beat of a hummingbird’s wings. And as all of these amazing things happen around you, your focus doesn’t waver for a minute from that person’s face, waiting for that fleeting expression of genuine emotion that graces one’s face before the reaction we decide to present takes over, making you feel as if that imperceptible moment never really happened in the first place. And you want nothing more than to make the decision on your own. The decision to take control and not ask for what you want, but take it. But is that choice really still in your power to make? It scares you to realize that, for once in your life, you might not be in control of what happens next.
December 14 Reverb10 Prompt – Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)
I’ve come to appreciate the ability to remain powerless – and not just tolerate that reaction, but embrace and appreciate it. I have been writing things like the passage above more often lately, and the conjecture of thought that strings all of my writings together seems to be this masochistic love of those who made me powerless – whether in a positive or negative manner. And at this point? I’m obsessed with cultivating this in all aspects of my life. Healthy or Sadistic? I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
