When I was a young lady I had a girlfriend. I admired how tough she was, and how nothing seemed to twist at her. Instead of crying, she'd light a cigarette and shrug her shoulders, lips slammed shut. She seemed impenetrable; how I wanted to be. So at 15, I decided I'd take up smoking and quit crying. And, with some exception, I was successful.It's hard learning to cry again. When I cry I become ugly, my mouth twisting up and my eyes disappearing into swollen red cheeks. It feels like my face will split into two. Afterwards I sit with spittle hanging from my gaping lips and my nose drips snot, salty, down my throat and skin.Sometimes when I laugh from the belly I loose control. I'll start sobbing into my laughter and I sound like a wounded bird. I guess it makes people uncomfortable. Me most of all.
I don't laugh as often as I used to.
I had a fight with my mom tonight. We sat in her car, the windows rolled up, the air stale and sick with emotion. Sweat rolled down my chest, pooling in the creases of my stomach skin.When I was a child, my mother told me stories about what it was like in the eye of a hurricane. She said there was green lightning and a calm that unsettled her. In the fight, I met this quiet that was like that. I had been yelling and then I couldn't hear her properly. I felt numb, tears pouring down my face and my mind said, you're expecting too much, just accept it. She can't fix this, can't fix you. Move on, stop fighting. You're being a turd.
I apologized. And then I said something real: I'm so afraid.
And then I couldn't breathe.
Just like that. No warning anxiety. Drowning.
My mom brought me back.
She said: Breathe out. Breathe out.
That's it.
Breathe out from here, where my hand is on the base of your tummy.
You're not going to die right now,
it will pass.
And it did.
