Crappy Stuff: Breathe

Stuff. Rantish? Hell, I don't know...

I've tried to understand the things that happened to me when I was younger.  It doesn't help that my depression affected my memory.  To this day, I have a very difficult time remembering things that happen to me.  Part of the reason I'm always writing things down.

 

I think I'm angry about my past, but my emotions confuse me and I tend to avoid them.  Reflection has led to many revelations, but the truth still blurs when I try to examine it too closely.  I don't know who to blame.  I don't know if blame is relevent.  In the past, when I showed anger about these events, my father told me I should get over it.  Past is past.  I don't know how to get over it. This changed so much of who I am.  Every step I take, I see my past reflected at me.

 

As a child, I was shaped, like hot metal.

 

I have always valued strength and independance over beauty.  I think, given a chance, I might have been quite a tomboy as a child.  I think I would have enjoyed it.  However, that is a chance I never had.

 

I don't know how to describe an asthma attack to someone who's never had one.  Even to people who have had them, it's hard to explain.  People talk about how frightening an attack is.  I was never afraid.  Even with the bad ones.

 

My emotions shut down.  I don't feel things until after the situation is over.  When I had asthma attacks, I was annoyed by them, but I was never frightened.  Even when I thought I was dying.

 

I can't describe the feeling of suffocation.  It's unpleasant.  Unbearable, really.  Like the worst pain you've ever felt, but there's no pain there.  Painless pain.  Constant.  Distracting.

 

Someone who thought they knew more than they did told me yesterday that I shouldn't be able to dance the way I do unless my asthma is mild.  He said that I didn't know what my body was capable of unless I'd been to basic training.  He said I must not have had a bad asthma attack because asthma attacks are horrible things.

 

He made me very angry.

 

My body has been compromised.  It has been disrespected.  Rape is not so bad as the things that happened to me when I was a child.  I know, because I was raped, and it meant nothing compared to the past.  A past I'm somehow supposed to get over.

 

I tried to be good as a child.  I tried to do what I was told.  I was young and impressionable, like soft wet clay in the hands of the adults who'd been appointed to look after me.  They told me to run with the other students-- for exercise, for my health-- so I ran.  When I stopped, they told me to keep going, so I kept going.  When I complained, they told me to take my inhaler and keep running.  I did because I was a child and they were teachers.

 

I can't describe what it feels like when your brain is so deprived of oxygen that you can't think clearly anymore.  You do what you're told to do because your ability to make decisions is gone.  Moving your arm feels like moving through water.  Milk.  Mud.  Breathing is the only thing you can think about because every breath takes all the strength you have.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  The teachers get angry and yell (why did they always have to yell?) "Owen, why aren't you running?  Come on.  You're falling behind."

 

The world smears when you move your head and you feel dizzy, sick.  Cold sweat all over your body.  Your nose is running and your throat is thick with phlegm.  "Come on.  There's no reason you shouldn't be able to do this.  Don't be lazy."

 

I cannot describe what it's like to try with all your strength to do something, every day, and never once succeed.  It would be like being told to fly and watching everyone around you sprout wings and soar like birds.  And there you are, land-locked, with bird-people cawing harshly in your ears.  "Why aren't you doing this?"

 

I tried.  I tried until I fell down.  Then I got up, and I kept trying.  I tried when I couldn't think.  I tried until they told me to stop, and when I lay down on the ground and didn't move, they yelled at me to get up again.

 

All of this was my laziness.  All of this was my "lack of control".  All of this would go away if I just tried harder.  If I used my inhaler.  I told them the inhaler wasn't working-- I needed to sit down and rest after taking it for it to have any affect-- but they didn't listen.  I hid the inhaler in my locker and refused to use it.  The stimulants made me shakey and weak.  I was weak enough already.

 

Even thinking about it now, my heartbeat quickens and I feel tears in my eyes.  My brain shuts down and my stomach clenches.  I am not afraid.  I AM NOT F*****G AFRAID!  I AM SAD AND I AM ANGRY!

 

...I am so angry that this happened to me.  Not once or twice or three times, but every day.  Every single, f*****g day!  And it never stopped.  Every time I went to gym I had an attack.  The attacks were so frequent that my body never fully recovered from one before the next one hit the next day.  I got weaker and weaker.  I had to stop swimming because I could barely stand when I crawled out of the pool.  They yelled at me for that, too.

 

I got bad grades because I couldn't pay attention in class.  I couldn't think clearly through all the fog in my head to answer the questions that the teacher asked me.  The other kids made fun of me and called me stupid.

 

My heart pounds so fast.  I wanted to be good.  I wanted to do the things I was told to.  I tried again and again and again.  I tried even when the doctor told me my lung capacity was diminishing rapidly.  When I was thirteen he told me that by the time I was twenty, I would be hooked to an oxygen tank— permanently.

 

And now I'm a dancer in a bar full of smoke.  "How can you do that?  You must have mild asthma."

 

Mild?  MILD!  IT WAS NOT F*****G MILD!

 

I cannot describe the things that have been done to me.  The things I was told to do to myself.   The things I did because I a child, and I was impressionable, and I wanted to be good.

 

I've always wanted to be strong, but I wasn't.  I was weakened, daily, humiliated by my weakness.  Humiliated during my weakness.   My greatest fear was that, someday, the bullies at the school would figure out that they could do whatever the hell they wanted to me.  I couldn't fight back.  I couldn't scream.  I didn't even have the breath to "no".

 

It took a year and a half, perhaps, after I graduated from college to clean myself up.  It took a long time for my body to heal and the last of the mucus to drain out of my lungs.  The swelling went down eventually, my muscles reoxygenated.  I regulated my own physical activities.  No gym teachers standing over my shoulder telling me what to do and what not to do.  When I felt my throat begin to swell, I stopped whatever I was doing.

 

I will always push my body to grow stronger.  Always another rep of weight-lifting.  Always another set of crunches.  But when I feel the faintest hint of the asthma, I stop everything.  I sit down.  I relax.  I am kind to my body when the asthma comes, because I know— it has taken me years to learn— that no force of will on my part, no matter how determined or desperate I am, will allow me to move through the asthma.

 

It is a barrier I cannot penetrate.  So many people insist to me that all I have to do is push myself a little harder.  But that's not the way my body works.  I push, and I fall down.  I push, and I see the inside of the ER.  I push, and I die.  I've run against this brick wall too many times.  Pounded my body against this force that I could not overcome.  Far too many times.

 

They broke me as a child, like a wild horse, and they broke me in.  But more than breaking me in.  They broke my spirit.  They overwhelmed my body with their demands and crushed my mind by telling me it was my fault.  I was taught, as a child, that I should ignore my own well-being to answer to the demands of others.  My own discomfort is irrelevent.

 

As one who borders on becoming an adult— at twenty-one I am barely there— I see myself disregarding my pain.  I am matter-of-fact about it.  I act as though it doesn't matter because, to me, it doesn't matter.  I was raped.  I am angry I was raped.  But it is unimportant.  I was molested.  I was bullied.  I was threatened.  I was hit.  I was humiliated.  It is all unimportant, because it is only me.

 

Hurt my friend and I am enraged.  I will attack you.  I will bring physical pain upon you— even though you are bigger than I am.

 

If you hurt me, I will be offended, but I will barely notice.  This is how I was shaped.

Author's Note

Anything I write with "crappy stuff" at the beginning is generally just that. It's intended to be more like journal writing, monkey at the typewriter sorts of stuff. There's really no purpose to it beyond my own constant need to be putting EVERYTHING into writing. If some part of it catches your eye, by all means comment on it, but if you don't want to waste your time reading this, that's very understandable.

Reviews

[Xfaerie corpseX]

i dont exactly know how u felt, but i can kinda relate. i can realte to the feeling of suffocation...when your lungs feel like theire closing up, air seems like its depleting fast, and your chst feels like its going to cave in, then your brain starts to hurt and things start to go black. ive went to doctors over it and they tell me they are panic attacks brought on my too much stress. im not even beginning to imply that about you. im just saying i can relate and it sucks. i mean. what are you supposed to do? you cant just ignore it and go on with your life. its unbearable. and you'd think, that with all todays technology, they'd find a way to help you in this situation, and when you pass out, youd think theyd be smart enough to know you arent faking it. that is definatly what pisses me off most. why would anyone fake it? what is it gonna get you? attention you already have and dont want? could maybe get you put in a mental home? why the hell would a person fake things like this. but. all things aside. you are a really good writer.