standing at the ready

With a few seemingly innocuous sentences, I am once again enveloped in a whirlwind of guilt, frustration, sadness, and anger. The sensations battle one another for dominance, generating a dusty veil of confusion over the lot. As the dust swirls, parts, reforms, I catch glimpses of the reds and blues that colour the warring emotions. My heart beats in my ears, I can't see straight, I can't sit still - I have to move, to pace the lines, to plan the next move. Is there a next move? Has there ever been a move but to sit and wait and occasionally extend a white flag, only to have it crushed underfoot not long after? The stretches of peace vary, and I spend every moment of them walking on eggshells. The tentative, relative sense of calm is simply the break between storms - I can always feel the clouds forming on the horizon, today a whiskey amber, tomorrow a rich burgundy. The hair on my arms stands up as I straighten my back to prepare for a battle I don't want to fight, have never wanted to. How can the cycle end when one side doesn't even realize there is something amiss?
I look beyond my own borders to see the sun shining upon lands of peace and plenty, where the people are happy, the place is healthy, and time is not spent strategizing how to make it through unscathed. My happiness for them manifests in tears of joy on their behalf, highlighting and mingling with my own tears of frustration. I never see the storm clouds cross the border, and I sense a tinge of green within the already swirling blues and reds. My only hope is to weave and wave a still larger white flag, and to slowly build up the neutral zone again, hoping my attempts to push back the incursions upon it go unnoticed. If I can go unnoticed, unremarked upon, indefinitely forgotten, the calmer waiting is infinitely better than tumultuous storm that signals the need to once again dive for the trenches.