Have you ever stopped breathing?

I’m not referring to figurative things, when you fall in love when you see your crush when you fail when you wait and cross your heart, though those can count too. I’m talking about flesh and blood, when your muscles constrict when your lungs fail you when your heart skips a beat and stays that way, off rhythm. I’m talking about the days I used to record episodes of chest paralysis so that I could show them to a doctor.

Have you?

Sometimes they come at the tail end of a nightmare, a blackout dream with nothing but an abyss. You know you are alive but your body is ignorant, stubborn. It keeps you muffled. It brings you down, traitor. Sometimes it comes when you are awake, overworked or perfectly healthy, and suddenly every expansion of your body feels like too much and too little. Sometimes it comes with embarrassment, when you are tongue-tied and aimless. Your body has betrayed you. And what do you do? You panic. You freeze.

But if it happens often enough you realize,

What thrill, this facsimile of staring death in the face…

if i do not fight to inhale i will die if i do not struggle to move i will die if i do not i will die

…to know that for a single moment you stand still as time slows down, in increments and then all at once, magnifying a moment of clear perfect fear, adrenaline.

And if you stop breathing often enough you realize,

That it is in the possibility of death that we know we are alive. We know that there can be an end to this life if we so choose, that to say yes to the path of least resistance is to say yes to end all as you know it,

to capitulate

So if time stops still long enough for you, you realize,

The rush of adrenaline happens because you want to live; that you struggle against gentler hands because tonight is not the night you sleep. You crawl against limitations because you cannot surrender…

you want to live.

…

stop breathing
and learn
after meeting infinity in moments
the beauty of an exhale
and the prospect
of sweet air

…

…

Life update I had some trouble breathing while I was trying to sleep last night.