That familiar place you go.
Note: I wrote this a couple weeks ago.
I’m trying to catch my breath after holding it so long. Breathing is dear to me, to us. He doesn’t think about it often, it’s mostly automatic--not like me, with anxieties that course through my veins twenty-four hours, sixteen awake and nervous and shaking on the inside so slowly no one could possibly see, eight full of running and screaming and almost dying under my soft, safe comforter. When someone touches the skin, breathing is so much more than a careless action in the day. It speeds up and up and up to the point of near death, or heaven (I would argue no difference), or it retreats a long moment to grasp onto something intangible as every force within loses control to pleasure.
I’m finally getting some air into my lungs, and it hurts. It hurts so much that I stop up the drain in the tub and watch as water quickly pools around the drain, tuck my body into the fetus position and let the warm water cradle me. I forget I’m naked, half-immersed in water. I’m crying--but not stretched out with tears, and I think of a statement made by a character in an episode of Lost: “Dogs are like children: Slap ‘em around enough and they’ll start to believe they deserve it.” I don’t deserve this. I don’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. After being slapped around so many times, I’m sure this can’t be happening.
The thought makes me cry some more, that there’s still this child-part of me who feels unworthy of happiness and goodness, and of the love that might come of it. He’s out there somewhere waiting for me to get out of the tub, but with my head like this, I’ll get out and I’ll do everything not to see him. I can not catch my breath.
I’m trying to catch my breath after holding it so long. Breathing is dear to me, to us. He doesn’t think about it often, it’s mostly automatic--not like me, with anxieties that course through my veins twenty-four hours, sixteen awake and nervous and shaking on the inside so slowly no one could possibly see, eight full of running and screaming and almost dying under my soft, safe comforter. When someone touches the skin, breathing is so much more than a careless action in the day. It speeds up and up and up to the point of near death, or heaven (I would argue no difference), or it retreats a long moment to grasp onto something intangible as every force within loses control to pleasure.
I’m finally getting some air into my lungs, and it hurts. It hurts so much that I stop up the drain in the tub and watch as water quickly pools around the drain, tuck my body into the fetus position and let the warm water cradle me. I forget I’m naked, half-immersed in water. I’m crying--but not stretched out with tears, and I think of a statement made by a character in an episode of Lost: “Dogs are like children: Slap ‘em around enough and they’ll start to believe they deserve it.” I don’t deserve this. I don’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. After being slapped around so many times, I’m sure this can’t be happening.
The thought makes me cry some more, that there’s still this child-part of me who feels unworthy of happiness and goodness, and of the love that might come of it. He’s out there somewhere waiting for me to get out of the tub, but with my head like this, I’ll get out and I’ll do everything not to see him. I can not catch my breath.