Halfway

c r a Z Y

"You're crazy!"
"I know!"

★ Breathe, please breathe. ★

Saturday, July 30, 2011 ( 9:09 AM )

Sometimes I get so lost in through I forget to breathe, or maybe I just hold my breath. If I've been quiet for a bit around you, and then I suddenly take a really big breath/gasp, that's the tell tale sign. Maybe it's like having a mini panic attack? I don't know.

When I was younger, I used to think about breathing so that I would forget to let my normal respiratory functions take place (have I mentioned this?), and then I could spend quite a while more trying to regulate my breathing pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if I developed irregular heart beat or something from staring out the window and trying to breathe. I didn't really understand the concept of "letting it happen".
I still don't really.
But that's not the point.

Breathing is something we take for granted. Every living human and animal breathes life. When we panic (which I do often) we breathe faster, when we sleep, we breathe slower. All movement and life reflects in this act alone.

I need to learn to breathe. People always say "calm down!" or "Breathe!" to me.
Makes me think of those medical dramas where the people are furiously doing CPR in a panic above someone who's pretty much dead. The contrast scares me. It's as if the live person is breathing faster, taking the dead person's share of oxygen, like they're breathing twice as fast because it's for two people.

And then at the end they give up saying "please breathe" and let it happen.

On February 22nd, I was surrounded by death. On the news. Down the street. It was generally distressing, and something where I remember changed my view on life forever. We are fragile, no matter how we wish to show it, we rely on something, and then it gets taken away, or we realise it's not fit to lean on, and then we stagger, and fall, and break.

And it's hard to breathe when I realise what I'm leaning on is barely recognisable as human.
We stagger.
Fall.
And sometimes, when we break,
not only do we forget to breathe,
we stop breathing all together.