Breathing

 You know, you would think that something so necessary to life would be easy, but the truth is it's not. Breathing is hard for me most days. Often, I have to remind myself to breathe. When someone tells me to breathe, I get this panic that makes my breathing even harder. I wish I had the just-right words to describe everything that goes on inside me when I am asked to focus on my breathing. And then being asked to close my eyes and breathe feels like something so dangerous and life-threatening.  There is this automatic response that makes me feel like I am fighting for my life. 

People often say to stop and focus on your breathing to calm down, but for me, that does the exact opposite. That stillness, that quiet, is dangerous, and a person has no idea what can happen in those moments. Focusing on my breathing for some reason brings me to the exact thing that shook me to my core. I can't take the time to breathe because for me, my very survival is at stake. I wish I had better words.  When the breathing does come naturally, when I am holding my granddaughter, when I am in a session with a client, breathing is normal and natural. When I have to focus on myself, terror creeps in, and I want to run. Focusing on my own breath brings a sense of impending doom, and it feels like I am not working hard enough to keep myself safe. 

Part of breathing brings me back to thirteen, and trying to focus on the little things just to survive.  In the most awful parts of the day, as they each took their turn and I just watched the fan, thinking each time would be the last, I am not sure I was really breathing. I know, in my head, physiologically, I had to have been, but everything in me was just trying to get through second by second. Everything was happening so fast around me. So many of them were coming at me, wanting me to do such horrid things that even breathing became something secondary.  For me, sitting with my own breathing brings me to that time, and I wish that I totally understood why. I don't think I know why, and maybe it scares me to find out. If you just pretend that you aren't breathing, then you don't exist, and if you don't exist, then those things really aren't happening. I would have given anything not to be there under that fan. I would have given anything not to be so hurt, so brutalized and disgusting. 

I heart your heart