Consumed!

 When we are young, we desperately crave adulthood and maturity. We are fed with an illusion that being an adult equates freedom and quite humorously, that could not be any further from the daunting truth. Freedom, you say? Absolutely wrong. Juanita wanted to grow up fast and break the chains that bonded her to parents who should have never even been given the chance to reproduce. So, when she got the first dose of masked freedom, she latched onto it like a drug.

Now years later, on a Monday morning,  Juanita sits, and she listens to the news of the volcanic eruption from the neighboring isle and watches with horror as numerous depictions of the magnificent, yet terrifying force of nature flash across her screen. A chain reaction, as is common with those monsters sent a chill down Juanita's own fragile dome. It was at that moment, that she felt her own temperature boiling and the sense of an internal eruption creeping out. Chain reaction indeed!

A burning desire to explode because whoever sold the idea of adulthood as a paradise indeed sold it with a slap across the soul and a slash to the throat. It was like a deep gushing wound that appears to never stop flowing because all of the trials and challenges insist on preying like vultures. Oh! The way they just loved swooping in.

Today is only Tuesday. Juanita, tired and frail, waking up before the rooster's crooked crow, desperately stumbling in the darkness of dawn, nakedly hopeless and just wanting to be chained to the bed instead. Alarming! Responsibilities galore. Juanita crept past the open door to where her children sleep and sighs heavily. Bundles of joy and hope that were left discarded by a man she thought would love her until adulthood was no more. Then,  inside her dome, the rumbling fizzles and gentle, silent tremors begin to consume her inner being. Exhausting!

By now it's eight o' clock and her phone rings. Juanita picks it up with dread and with a nervous tone, she answers "hello". "Your bill is way past due," said the unconcerned and nonchalant voice on the other side of the line. Deep breath in. Exhale! Juanita gives an explanation that she knows indeed, is a lie, but what else could she offer to silence the lava that was slowly creeping up and boiling at her every nerve. Hopelessness!

At ten a.m., one child falls ill and catastrophe slowly walks in. The kettle whistles in a deafening tone on the stove top, serving a deadly reminder of the temperature that was rising inside her. Fuming! How much can a human absorb? She fights back tears and haphazardly packs her bags and was about to rush out of the door when....... that piercing ringtone cut through the air once and this time when she picks up, she is exasperated, totally out of air. Blown!

Now her sister's friend has just been shot and now the one she loves the most was now in shock. Overwhelming! 

Juanita stumbles, goes down hard and bruises her knees. She scrapes at her skin amd then she screams. Loud, they echo. All feelings unleash! Juanita's dome collapses, her crater violently rocks, her mountains incessantly shiver and lava flows. Bright, orange, thick. Unstoppable!

And there she lay, consumed; in utterly defeat. She lets biology take its course and lets her natural emotions flow.