THE MOMENT

So the s*** storm started on a very average day. This moment, this drop in time, was to change the path of my life as I knew it. It was to change everything. The moment popped along, all unassuming and innocent. It crept up from behind me connecting mystical jump leads to my ears and shocked me, someone somewhere seemed to shout 'Give it some revs Michelle!' Something behind my eyes exploded. There was death. And space was made...

There i was, minding my own business, when my world suddenly stood up in front of me and started yelling at me. It was monumental. An earthquake of a moment, one that shakes you to the core, drops your stomach to your bowels, makes your eyes swell in their sockets as if dying to pop out and roll away to a place where they don't have to look at this s*** anymore...

So the moment hit as i was stood in aisle five of my local Tesco.

Looking back i don't know why i was actually there. Well, i do, i was there to buy an air freshener, but i don't know why i needed one. Air freshener. The very name doesn't even make sense to me now. Surely a key benefit of air, being that it is everywhere around us and constantly moving, is that it is, by nature, fresh? Well. Apparently not. No. Unless our homes are filled with aromas of chemically enhanced flowery fragrances (or spicy apples at Christmas...) then we risk being dubbed social outcasts, dirty, uncivilised philistines who should retreat into a cave or something... but i digress. So there i was, in aisle five in front of a feast of air freshener choices... I could have one that blew three different scents (apparently we risk becoming used to just one, and therefore would fail to benefit from its wonderful aroma and bad things will happen) hmm, sounds a good option, but wait! What about the one that is motion sensored??? that way when my house hold members arrive home dishevelled and tired from their life my trusty friend the air freshener will politely puff out a chuff of perfume and all will be well in the world..? Definitely an option.. but then what about the candles? They look pretty and come in a nice pot, or hang on, what about the ones that flicker LIKE a candle but aren't actually a candle? How about that eh? Neat eh? Why? i have no f***ing idea.. Decision made. No wait... what about the one that has a timer that can puff 3, 6 or 9 times an hour... that way when i am feeling particularly smelly (as we all do at times) i can set it to stinky mode but when the air is feeling fresh, hey presto! ill turn it to thrice and optimum air freshness will be achieved........ arrrrrghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

The moment hit.

Beneath my feet the ground moved, i looked down and saw a crack forming in the Formica floor between my legs, looking around the super market i had once known had changed, i was standing on the cusp of sanity and insanity with the shocking realisation that it was not sanity i was currently occupying but insanity, all around me my fellow shoppers became fellow asylum dwellers, wandered bog eyed with their metal basket crutches aimlessly wasting intelligent thought time on inane consumer decisions, searching for fat free options loaded in sugar, opting for winter protection hair shampoo lest rain and wind suddenly cause baldness (don't worry - pantene will save you...) running scared down the household aisle loading up with bleaches, sprays, detergent, bottles upon bottles of product to save us from teeny tiny bacterias that KILL KILL KILL. (Apparently before we had these life savers everyone simply wrapped them selves in cling film - head to toe for protection...) Sweating, i fought my insane urges - to run screaming to the deodorant aisle and redeem myself by dousing myself in fusions of fruit and accents of berries - i looked down, the crack in the ground had become a cravace, a dark foreboding split in society, an escape but certain death, bottomless, wider it grew as i stood in panic, heart racing (insane urges wanting to sprint to the vitamin aisle and swallow some calms...) What was happening??! Everyone is mad!

I leapt into the cravace.