Her Moment of Clarity

"Dear God, help me to get out of here,"
she breathed silently.
Her grip on the plastic handle of the shopping cart
tightened and twisted in a moment of panic.

Her eyes darted from the pencil boxes,
to the flower arrangements, from the cereal boxes,
to the back-to-school display in the center isle.

Suddenly the florecent lighting was all too vivid,
revealing the rubbery skins of shoppers:
bodies hanging over motorized wheelchairs,
smoke wrinkled faces with unkept hair,
middle-aged mothers with wide hips, gold earrings and polished nails,
willowy daughters with protruding, nude navels,
red-haired boys with freckles and guns,
missing teeth, child carriers, walking suits
with minds else where.

"Pleeeease, help me get out of here. I am ready.
Yes. Finally ready." She tried to lay her mind bare, open,
as she searched for maxi pads with wings.
Purple packages, yellow, and mint green--
all sizes to choose from--fit for the appropriate occassion.
Light days, heavy days, and over-night.

But she didn't want to see a gazillion choices
of toothpaste and vitamines. Camping gear marked down.
She had just read:

Michael T, MS 1998, PhD 2003 (GLE).
After finishing my dissertation in late 2002,
my fiancee, Vong, and I moved to Houston, and I started a job in research and development at BP Corporation. After a year at BP, I realized the company was a little too big, so I took a job as senior research geophysicist with a small start-up company, in the UK [. . .] Vong and I now live in Alberdeen, Scotland and are enjoying traveling Europe as much as possible. We have only been in Aberdeen since Jan. 2004, but our recent trips include Greece, Belgium, France, [. . .] and the Jorvik Viking Festival in York. Of course, emails are always welcome.

and momentarily, her life had been revealed.

This boy had been her first crush, in Ms. Sweedish's fourth grade.
She had convinced him to do a project on Astronomy
with her during recess and then, later, a project identify rocks.
Geology.
They had been identified as TAG together since 3rd grade.
She watched him look down Julie's blouce to see her budding breasts.

By eighth grade, she had become his assistant in architectural design
for young girls he planned to hit on--namely the other redhead.
Eighth grade would also see a moment of violence
when she would slam him against a wall by the throat
and threaten to kill him for making her the butt end of his jokes.

In nineth grade, home economics class, concerned for the soul
she valued most, she would screw up her courage and ask,
"Do you know who Jesus is?"
"Of course," he would sneer. "As your personal saviour?"
her cheeks would flame. And that would be the end of speaking.

Until several thousands of years later,
when she would duck into a candy store during
a mass Halloween celebration in a smallish university town.
He would be behind the counter
and smile incredulously when he saw her
sporting a black leather biker-jacket.
"Was that guy flirting with you?" her partner would ask
as they left the shop.
"No. That wouldn't be possible."

And even he had not graduated Valor Victorian. No, her class
had been absolutely exceptional. What freak circumstances--
that she should grow into adulthood under such an environment.
Considering her own economic, familia and cultural disadvantages.
It's a wonder she survived.

Never expecting to thrive.

"Help me, help me to get out of here," the silent, desperate
cry continued to the other end of the store in search for
laundry detergent.
But bears danced to sell crackers
and little old women with too much lipstick
stuck out trays of cheese and toothpicked sausages.

These moments of clarity for her are sharp and painful;
they must have been caused by the juxtaposition
of three circumstances in her immediate life:
1) finally watching _What the Bleep Do We Know_
2) beginning therapy with psycotropic medication
3) and realizing that, for her, writing is the only way out.