5.12.2009

oxygen deprivation...

Learning to breathe is the most difficult lesson ever to be learned. It takes more effort than any other normal function. For instance, one does not have to learn to keep their heart beating. However, keeping oxygen flowing in and out of my lungs takes a constant reminder. Slow down. Take a breath. Relax. Try not to panic. Try to stop panicking. Try to remember to breathe.

Sometimes I want to scream obscenities at the top of my lungs. I want to curse everyone and everything that is taking away my sanity. This idea never works. The vulgar words get stuck on my tongue and the chastising venom spewing in my head never comes to fruition.

Somehow I have allowed myself to become convinced that the feelings of everyone around me are more important and more fragile than my own. I gently apply a soothing but mostly ineffective balm to my aching heart and I try to remember to let the air come into my starving lungs.

Deep in my soul a writhing, tumultuous, seething, monster is lurking. She carefully and gleefully tends to my festering wounds hoping that they will explode into a giant black hole that will consume everything in its path. There would be nothing left. A vacuum of time and space where everyone and everything that I knew would be gone. On the other side of this wormhole of nothingness there would be a field of rotting corpses left in my wake.

Sometimes I want to scream obscenities at the top of my lungs, but then I remind myself that it already takes too much effort to breathe without all of the unnecessary loss of air that comes from allowing bitter and worthless tripe to flow from my mouth with the same pressure as a fire hose.

Breathing. Taking a minute to pause. Allowing myself to compartmentalize and move on. Always, most importantly, remembering to allow the flow of oxygen to continue throughout my starving and desperate body. Trying to remember. Trying to keep myself going. Trying to stop the inevitable. Remember... breathe.

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