Waiting to Exhale (Patreon)

At some point in the not-too-distant past, we all took one breath that stayed inside of us. Usually, with the way breathing works, it's a pretty balanced thing. You breathe in, and then, you breathe out. It's a tradeoff. But, for each of us, we took a breath that stayed inside and kept us filled up in that way where you can't relax your shoulders, and where, try as you might, you just can't seem to get enough air in your lungs. Something else is already taking that new air's place. 

I wonder what happens to air like that when it stays inside of you for too long. Does it get stale? If it's in there for a little while, is it like an attic you haven't gone into for a few years, and didn't know there was a moisture problem, and now, all of the books in that box make you sneeze, but they're sentimental books, so you try to clean them because you promised your mom you would take care of them, because she never liked her grandmother anyway, so she gave them to you, and now you're stuck with them, but would still feel bad if something happened to them, even though your great-grandmother, from all accounts, wasn't a very pleasant person? 

Or, if it stays in there for longer, is it like one of Carter's tombs in Egypt, and when you crack it open, all the air rushes out, and mold that's been hanging out in there gets inside of you, and you don't really have as good a knack on germ theory as you do on Egyptology (bloody colonialist), so you just say "Agghhh, Curse of the Pharaohs!!1!!!" and then everybody starts dying, and the end result is that Hollywood Won't Hire Brendan Frasier Anymore (And Here's Why!)?

Maybe it's something where you didn't have the vocabulary to realize the bullshit. Like, that cousin was still invited over to your house because redemption without penitence just makes things more comfortable because this family is a family, and doesn't talk about uncomfortable things, because we just want everything to be nice and normal, even though you totally know that guy is still a huuuuge pedophile; 

Maybe it was inherited, from members of your family who have been around the block way more times than you've been, and it's just something that's always been there. Maybe some asshole put your ancestor on a boat in Ghana 400 years ago, and now, in lieu of reparations (or even a fucking apology), your inheritance is getting a lump in the pit of your stomach because the red and blue strobe lights are informing you that you had the audacity to do 33 in a 35.

Maybe you were born with it, and up until a couple of weeks ago, could have gotten fired from your job at the muffler shop because your boss found out you hit up the gay bar after work. 

Maybe your dad was a cheating sonuvabitch who drank himself to death at 60, and even though you never got to know the guy (and never liked him much in the first place, because he totally fucked your mom over), you still feel as if he took the coward's way out, and robbed you of the one thing he could have ever given you, which is being alive enough to still be able to punch in the face. 

Oh! Or maybe it was something tiny! Maybe, a few weeks ago, you were looking forward to getting a Polaroid in the mail (they still make them, you know! They're fun!), and the place you ordered it from (and you like to support local business) took your money before telling you they were sold out at the moment, but they didn't refund you for a couple of weeks, but that was money you put aside to buy the damn thing, because you wanted to treat yourself, and it's not like you've got the bucks to just order a whole other camera from somewhere else, so now you're in this limbo of having to wait for the cash to get back into your account. And you know, logically, in the front of your head, that this isn't a big-deal thing, but goddam it if it just doesn't piss you off a little bit every day, because that's not how things are supposed to work, and then you get this second pang of adrenaline in your gut because it hits you that nothing has been working the way it's supposed to work, lately, and that the whole fucking thing has just been turned into a big ol' pile of shit. 

Maybe it's coming to the conclusion that if you were to poll assholes on Florida beaches (I was raised there, so I can say it), and you asked them how many of them have had someone they like die recently, the resulting chart would be a Venn Diagram that consisted of two separate circles. 

Maybe it's a Howard Beale kinda thing (Network, 1976, great flick if you haven't seen it, it's aged well), where you constantly vacillate between...

"We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone."

...and...

"I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value! I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!"

Yeah, that would probably dislodge the breath. 

Maybe, in the back of your mind, you want to keep that breath inside for as long as possible. Maybe life, and experience, have taught you that the moment you let it out, that's the moment when the other shoe is going to drop. And all of your pent up, paranoid, catastrophizing anxiety will (even if it wasn't what you expected it was going to be, because it never, ever is!) will have been all worth while, because at least you were right, when you said to yourself, 10,000 times, that something bad was gonna happen. 

Or, maybe you want to keep it inside, because there's some weird force in that breath that powers you, and moves you forward. Something bigger than oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor, argon, and carbon dioxide. Maybe, you think when you're lying awake at 4:00 a.m., that if you lost that breath, you'd lose your direction. Is the tenseness worth it? What would I give up if my shoulders could just relax for a second?

I've taken up meditating lately. I wasn't quite sure if it works. I like to think it does; it has a hell of a track record. But when it comes to sitting in a quite space and being alone with my own thoughts... Ehhh... They just kinda seem to re-circulate.

I read something a little while back that says that some of us literally have a "voice inside our heads:" an internal monologue that actually speaks to us, and narrates what's happening, in our own voice. "I am pouring coffee; now, I am sipping coffee." Things like that. And then, some of us don't. I don't. I was surprised when I started quizzing friends and some of them would tell me, "wait, you don't hear a voice? At all? What do you hear?" And I said... "Well... I guess it's nebulous gas clouds of thought that just kinda bump into each other to create new thoughts?" (I always envision them as multiple Farts of Rick and Morty fame.) And they're as befuddled as I am about them. 

In my case, I've found a way to make it more effective. At the risk of sounding incredibly douchy, I've found that Jazz fills the potholes in my brain when it comes to distracting myself just enough, but not being too methodic as to actually focus on the music. Longtime readers will know that Coltrane, Monk, Davis, and Parker have long been on my ancient iPod, but that's the damned thing about Jazz. If you hear the songs enough, you start to predict the notes that aren't gonna be played. And (I suppose) as any Jazz-person will tell you, that takes away part of the fun. 

Jazz is better when its live. It's an organic thing. Like life, and thoughts (the best and worst of them), and, well, like breathing. But in lieu of that, being far, far away from the nearest Jazz bar? I've found some solace in this dude. (Colbert fans already know him, but dig deeper on YouTube, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.) It's fun to hear a song you've loved your whole life, and laugh because you're so happy to hear it for the first time. 

I guess laughing is the best type of breathing.