breathless

 

There’s an old new-age adage that goes something like this:

“Don’t measure your life by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”

Life cooperates by being breathtakingly breathless from the start.

breathless

It’s hard to breathe when you’re born.

You don’t know how to do it

in the bright, harsh, unknown world that assails you

when you emerge from your mama’s belly.

Your new reality is so shockingly unlike life in the womb

that you need a good slap to kick-start the breathing process.

That first breath is hard to breathe. So are many of the millions that follow.

It’s hard to breathe when the blankets on your bed are made of lead,

so dense and heavy they pin you down, your dreams along with you.

It’s hard to breathe when you run too far, too fast,

jumping over hurdles, taking unexpected detours,

running, running, running to get there,

often without knowing where there is.

It’s equally challenging when you lean into each step,

dragging the weight of your world behind you.

It’s hard to breathe when you cry from your core

when your sinuses become a thicket, your throat chokes,

your body shudders, and tears flow down your cheeks like a river.

It’s hard to breathe with your back up against the wall and a knife at your jugular

It doesn’t matter if the knife and the wall are real or not.

It’s hard to breathe with your hands tied behind you,

even though your hands have nothing to do with your breath,

and the ties that bind are invisible.

It’s hard to breathe when someone punches you in the stomach

and knocks the wind out of you, either literally or figuratively.

Sometimes a figurative loss is worse because it may last a lifetime;

one can usually catch a literal lost breath in less than a minute.

It’s hard to breathe when you lose someone or something you love.

Sometimes it’s so hard to breathe that you also lose yourself.

It’s hard to breathe when you climb so high the air becomes thin enough to slip through the cracks in your psyche

and when it gets there, too thin to quench your thirsty lungs.

It’s hard to breathe when you are so afraid your brain forgets

to tell your lungs to expand and contract, expand and contract,

expand and contract, and expand again.

It’s hard to breathe when you are wracked with anxiety,

and you race, race, race from one thing to another in a constant state of overwhelm, because you have too much to do in too little time and you only have one life to live and this may be it so you had better hurry, hurry, hurry up and make it count and if that means foregoing breathing, well, that’s just the way it is and what can you do about it anyway?

It’s hard to breathe when you are overcome with excitement

about the possibility of the next moment

and your body goes into a breath-free spasm

until the moment and the possibility have been realized.

Or not. Either way, you then exhale.

Life is so unrelentingly breathtakingly breathless,

it’s hard to breathe when you’re alive.

And it’s easy to forget it’s even harder when you’re not.