What does the last straw look like?
It looks just like the first. Small, lightweight, no
big deal. Blow it off with a puff of air and attitude. The second one looks
identical. Then the third and thirty-third. Gradually it gets worse. Pretend you're surrounded by amber waves of grain. Aside from a lot of sneezing, everything
seems fine. This is the only normal you’ve ever known so you don’t realize the
danger you’re in.
After all, you still have a brain.
But let’s say you get stuck there, right in the
center of Kansas inside your very own cyclone. It's so windy now it makes the rest of Tornado Alley seem like a
summer breeze. If you’re resilient, you can handle it - that’s what all those
child psychologists say, anyway. But maybe they didn’t grow up standing in the
middle of hay field like you did. Maybe resilience isn’t the antidote to suffocation.
Just look at you. You’re completely covered up by a mountain of chaff, barely breathing. If you’re
very careful, you can still inhale a little oxygen through tightly pursed lips,
though.
That’s when it happens. The last straw.
Though a tiny, little piece of you can still be seen
through the beige decoupage silencing your voice, speaking up is out of the question. All you care about now is remembering how to
breathe.
“If I stand very still,” you think to yourself, “the
chaff will fall off on its own.”
That’s when you’re glad you can’t talk, since anyone
hearing that comment would think you didn’t
have a brain.
“Surely the wind tunnel I’ve always lived in will
blow this stuff away . . . eventually . . .”
But it doesn’t. It’s as though straw is magnetic and
you’re the Tin Man. It’s heartless. Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.
You have become a living mound of straw. Not because
you love the feel of it. Not because you deserve it. Not because you are afraid
to escape it. But because it is bigger than you. Survival is your only option.
Breathing your only luxury.
Until the last straw. The final nail in your grassy
coffin. The piece that found your only connection to the outside world and
covered it up, covered you up, threatened to smother you.
But you. Brave little you. You refused to be
suffocated.
For a minute there, you thought you were a goner. Everybody
did. Everyone thought the last straw would be the most powerful piece, the one
to take you down, shut you up, bury you. Instead, the last piece was the one to empower you to speak up, push back, dig your way out, and refuse to stop
breathing.
That's when the wind blew harder. But now you knew
what to do. You turned around. You faced the other direction. You kept your back
to the wind and watched the straw blow past you as you walked away from the hay
field where you once were stuck.
It took a million little pieces to glue you to the
ground. It took one last piece to set you free.
Thank God for the last straw.
Thanks to Karmatosed for the photograph at the top of the page. Love it. You can view the original at https://www.flickr.com/photos/karmatosed/5291199462/in/photolist-94yMfW-ei15yW-ocEN5f-creKMJ-5wja9w-a9GcBV-vJedRq-oeYYxo-ytv7Mp-aXJsyR-k5ywch-k5wBqB-iMhYP7-e53Vyy-JAaDtL-iMhjS4-4ZwCPj-uTuNbJ-fYUMfd-k5w1x2-oeTVQ7-k5yqTm-o7ECEz-ousu7b-owuJnM-826KCJ-iKf7ye-dehN8R-othVeR-oeSksS-k4YPpb-rQTTwM-ouq6f1-tCR1Np-k5wvtB-A4fUAt-aKwpft-k5wwPc-aaQ8F3-p6JfDk-k5wwwt-ouK4dP-oeUCYR-p6Jfyk-bXjrMz-a9JZdG-ounF8K-BSkTaB-a7eSCx-obZ6Nw
