Keep Breathing
Trigger Warning: self harm/suicide & mental health stuff, and brief sexual references.
I don’t say hang in there. I don’t say it’s going to be ok without knowing it really is (or at least being relatively sure I can make it so). I don’t often tell people things will be better tomorrow, it will get better, or it’s only up from here!
I say “Keep Breathing”.
Hang in there? I have lost count of the people I’ve known, or known of by one degree of separation, that have quite literally hung themselves. I don’t want to be responsible for putting that in someones head.
It’s going to be ok? Things will be better tomorrow? Is it? I can’t promise you that. I can’t know that. It might not be going to be ok. Fuck, it might be going to get worse! No one can guarantee you , as much as we want to, as much as when I stroke their dying forehead with my hand and want them to truly believe it, that it’s going to be ok.
It’s only up from here? Unless we’re quite literally at the bottom of a set of stairs or a hole someone has dug in the ground (and even then we could get lower) no — it’s not only up from here. It’s sideways and slantways and longways and backways. It’s up, sure, potentially, but it’s down too. Hell, some people will dig down. Don’t judge.
Breathing though… Do it now, just breathe a bit. I know there’s science, and I know there’s the right words and the right explanations — but just breathe a bit, and you’ll generally feel better. Now, I can’t help you with this if you have a literal breathing problem, and I guess that’s my point of compromise here, but assuming you can normally breathe in a relatively normal fashion, you’ve just felt a touch better.
I’m a little angry this afternoon, and a little scared. Some truly awful shit has happened in the world today/recently, but then it always has. How do we get through it? What do we say, how do we put one foot in front of the other, stand up out of our chair rather than slumping, or just continue to exist?
That’s mine. Keep breathing.
In several of the many discussions with several different individuals, some of which were qualified therapists (please don’t hold it against them), I came across Mindfulness and I do like it. It teaches some mental wellness techniques and some cognitive awareness stuff in among everything else, but breathing has always been part of me (strange that). OK, let me rephrase — the manner of breathing has always been part of how I deal with things.
Now it’s not necessarily about taking a lotus position with a straight back, open mind, and finding the penguin in the cave of ice while you breathe in through your ears and out through your eye sockets. Don’t get me wrong, it can be and sometimes that’s what we need, but other times?
Other times it’s about when I’ve been heaving my guts up (Australianism translation: vomiting) for twenty minutes, screaming into the toilet as pain grips my brain in a dragon like claw and bile burns up my throat to flare out my nostrils like the very same dragon’s breath, my stomach raw and empty from the first ten minutes. I clutch at the wall, at the towel rack, at the toilet paper holder (once ripped from the wall) as I gain back control of my own body, and draw deep breaths to re oxygenate my body and get some kind of control, shoulders heaving, back coated in the combined sweat of exertion and terror. It sounds (literally) terrifying. Even once the screaming of the migraine stops, I’m like a wild animal with my throat flared wide, a funnel of air in and out creating sounds that would befit The Bear in Annihilation. I won’t lie, I scare people, and I feel some kind of kinship with that bear. Our poor cat was terrified last time I had a migraine.
Other times it’s the paced breathing of sex, air with carnal rhythm. I won’t breach that topic further here, I’m not comfortable discussing anyones sex life on a public website let alone my own, but if you’re reading this article I want you to be clear and understand — the way you breathe is kinda important there too.
I breathe different when I’m reading, engaged in the story. I remember being mocked for it in high school (because, you know, there wasn’t enough other stuff to mock), my eyes focused on the page and my mouth making shapes in front of an imaginary flute, blowing air down on my hands or in front of me part of the mechanism for keeping my immersion going too far, and pacing my reading.
Rarely of late, and that is only a regret for my own health (not my appearance, I like the fat in my body, I actually really do, even if you can’t or don’t believe it), it’s the paced but not too paced breathing while walking or running, mouth agape to catch ever fly in the world that strays in my path while walking, or comes too close to the treadmill/exercise bike/random equipment at the gym. Also at the gym, it’s quieter, shallower, and paced on the lat pull machine, something I’ve always favoured for making my back feel better, or while mentally counting any number of physical exercises.
Most of all, the breathing is important with the anxiety, or the anger, or any emotion. It fills my chest with pressure, but not the pressure of the anxiety, or the stitch of the exertion. It softly caresses my face, in and out, the colder the air the more inviting I find myself to it. I drink it in, I swell with it, and I collapse with it like a shell of frost sans its support, collecting myself into liquid water again slowly before the next breath.
I began saying keep breathing (usually adding a ❤ for good measure) in what some may consider an over sensitivity to triggering others, but I have come to love the sentiment of it. I hope those that know me understand the sentiment behind it, or draw even a hundredth the comfort I intend from the words intoned, or typed. Often we cannot help, we can’t see an end to the worlds problems (god, today… just, yeah what is wrong with you world? A tear comes to my eye just typing that again), and we can so easily say the wrong words.
Those are my right words. The worlds I’ll stand by, ’til the roof collapses and the lights go out.
Come for them anytime you need them. No macro, no copy/paste, no bot (Auto or Decepticon). You’ll get them. Of course, if you need any of the other words, well, you’ll probably get them too if you make it clear that’s what you need. Sometimes, we’re allowed to be Wesley at the end of Angel.
Keep breathing.
