Loud Exhalers

He looked like ZZ Top.

Too much wisdom accompanied by a scraggly beard and what should have been a leather motorcycle jacket but instead was a polo shirt inscribed with the company’s logo.

ZZ Top. It’s pretty cool for me to know who he is, right? Not really. I’m mostly aware of this pop culture icon because he guest starred on a few episodes of Bones. This is commentary I generally stay away from on a date because that’s the part where the guy starts looking at me like, “wow, you are wayyyyy more nerdy than you first appeared.” But this isn’t a date. This is just you guys. All of you who for some reason want to know the details of my life (which is why you are here and reading this) and by now are dying to know who in heck the ZZ Top look-a-like is in the polo shirt…

Let’s talk about that.

It was the Saturday before Memorial Day and I’d just finished at Target. It’s five miles away from the house which seems like an arduous trek and I plan it carefully. I was supposed to be attending a cookout with some people I’d met the previous evening and though Jason and Sam would be there my anxiety levels were at an all-time high.

Along with the couple who invited me was a man I’d met the previous evening, who after about ten minutes of talking to me, had made it quite clear that I was a very interesting woman. This sounds like a lovely thing for a man standing under twinkle lights to say to a woman he’d just met whilst staring into her eyes.

It was not.

He said it with a grimace. Right after he informed me that my style of writing sounded incorrect and he couldn’t fathom my choice to get a tattoo even as I mentioned its anchoring effect.

Then he looked at my LaCroixs Over Boys t-shirt and said, “What’s that all about?”

I was done.

Smiling in a way that bared all my teeth I said, “I’m a big fan of aggressively feminist t-shirts.”

Standing in the aisles of Target between aqua elephants and charcoal face masks, my anxiety began to rise.

The thought of meeting a whole passel of new humans who had the potential to promptly reject the notion of me within ten minutes of conversation did not sound exciting. Especially when this man might be there.

So, I did something I rarely do. I hid. Generally I plow head on into a situation, taking whatever punishment is meted out, but on Saturday I chose a different path. I made an appointment for a massage and I hid.

I was sitting in the darkened grey and purple room as spa music played when ZZ Top’s doppleganger walked in.

There are moments when the world shifts a bit and you see someone in a setting that seems more suitable for them than their current one. I always got Ally McBeal. Her vivid daydreams are my real life.

As I looked at this man in his khakis and polo whose swirling beard reached mid-chest, my image of him shifted and I saw him in fingerless leather gloves standing in front of a worn wooden bar, jeans molded by the road with boots suited for riding, and coat to match. In my mind, he was tossing back shots. In this room that smelled of lavender and last minute stress, he was firmly telling me which direction I needed to get moving towards.

Meekly, I followed.

The massage was moving along fine until he began lecturing me on water intake and muscles sticking to each other and breathing.

It was then that I wanted to ask him to be silent. But as I began listening to him, I found him saying things which resonated.

“Breathing is essential to our well-being,” he was saying as he worked his way to the stress I was carrying in my shoulders. “And I believe in vocalization of a breath. You need to let your breath out in a way that can be heard. It’s important that the stress you are under be heard by those around you. The stress givers are likely to go away when they hear that sign of your stress, that deep breath release. Your friends and colleagues are going to ask you what’s going on which allows you the opportunity to discuss the stress, thereby releasing more of it. And your vocal cords are near a portion of your brain that will respond to the delta waves released at the depth of sound that comes with the vocalization of your breath — it is calming.”

He pushed harder on the knot under my left shoulder causing my breathing to become jagged and forcing my silent even breaths to become louder.

“You can’t keep all of this inside,” he said. “You’ve got to let it out.” He bent my arm and began on it and for the first time in my seventeen years of getting massages I began to cry on the table. I apologized as my nose dripped onto the floor.

“This is normal,” he said, “This is good. You need to let this out. When you keep these feelings inside it affects your immune system and your entire body.”

And so I did. He pushed and pulled and forced the knots out and I breathed loud breaths. And wept.

I’ve been carrying a lot of things around for awhile now. I haven’t written for a whole list of reasons.

Once I was fearless. I want to be that way again. I don’t want to hide anymore.

So, hear are my reasons. I’m just going to say them. I’m afraid my honesty about my personal life could affect my livelihood. I worry that I don’t have good words anymore and they aren’t useful and maybe guys like the one at Rosemary the other night are right — this kind of writing isn’t meaningful.

Most importantly, I write for you. All of you. I tell my things so you can connect and process your things. I’m honest about what I see and have seen and want to see so that someone can say, “me too,” and know they’re not alone. And above all, I worry that maybe no one is listening.

But, I guess that’s not completely true.

Amber asked me to write this. I know Ronne will read it and maybe Micah. Jeremiah always does as well. Maybe three or four people will remember to breath louder today. That is a good thing.

So, these are my details and I thinks it’s in the details (our own and those of others) that we figure life and love and other humans out.

It’s through our details that we have epiphany moments where we say, “Oh, damn, vocalization of breath…I have been holding my breath for so long I didn’t even realize it. I’ve been walking around on eggshells for so long trying to be what people I haven’t even met and don’t even know want me to be. I need to start BREATHING OUT LOUD.”

I know I talk a hella lot about taking up space but it’s because we intend to and then someone else comes along and shoves us back into a corner and says, “Nah, I think that’s where you belong,” and we are just so conditioned to listening and saying, “yes, ma’am, yes, sir,” that we stay there. It’s time we be continually intentional about it until it is a habit of ours.

Come now, my darling, link pinkie fingers with me. This is a promise between you and I, habitual takers up of space, that’s the intention we are setting. No apologies. No takesies backsies. Once more into the breach.

Let’s go. We’re going to take up space. We are going to be loud exhalers.

So, anyway…that’s what’s happening over here…

Love you. Mean it.

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