breathe, just breathe

One of the best things about vacations is this: you breathe again.
I know, it sounds absurd, right? You breathe all the time, without even thinking about, with the pace of your breaths linked to your gender and activity level and various other things.
But on a true vacation, one that has a little staying power to it or a relaxing vibe, you wake up one morning and realize: you're breathing.
Very nice feeling.

Um... you've been somewhere? I missed it??

No, I've been here, but the vacation came to me. So to speak.

Okay, the bait is out there, i'll bite. Whatever are you talking about?

Okay, remember i was talking about five-year anniversaries of bad things?

(Silent nod and slow exhale.)

Well, yesterday was such a day. I had actually gotten the date one day off earlier, but the seventh of July of 2007 was the day of betrayal and the last day of my ex in the house. As you know, i had been planning a pity party, to bitch and moan and be generally unsociable. Oh, but with some poor sod to serve as designated driver. Or some such. Pity party, mega scale. But i didn't get to do that.
And at first i was pretty aggravated about it.
But it all worked out for the best.
You see, my bff came down for the weekend and stayed with me. As did her husband. And her lovely daughter, my punk rock goth girl.

Oh, how wonderful! She always perks you up, doesn't she?

Yes, she does. She certainly does. On this trip, she had come with some dread of her own: her 'rents wanted to look at houses, as they will be moving in here in a bout a year. Meaning, of course, that she would be moving here in about a year. And going to a new high school. And all that jazz.

Well, you know, you go where the job is, right? Her dad has a new job and it's here, so the family has to be move here, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You weren't uprooted in your teen years, so you really don't know. But i digress.
Your fault.

Again?

You bet! So, let me set the scene: on Friday, i wake up and am feeling pissy because i have company coming to my pity party. I eventually take some of that hostility out on the yard, getting most of the front lawn cut before my battery-powered mower runs out of juice. (I think the mohawk strip perpendicular to my sliver of moon looks cool, so i may start doing that intentionally.) Some of my new girlfriends have invited me to an evening meet-up down by the river, so i go, all the while knowing my bff and family are on their way to town. Remember, i was feeling pissy.

So you've said.

Okay. (Deep breath.) Well, my new girlfriends don't know any in-depth on me. Which means they don't know i have a pity party planned. And you know what happened? The pity party got circumvented right out of existence, at least for that evening. I had a margarita and shared a bucket of boiled shrimp and danced and sang and talked. Then i shared s'mores and danced and sang and talked. That evening, i allowed myself to take a little vacation from the demons in my head. And the reason i could is simple: no one there knew of them, so i didn't have to acknowledge those serpents, either.
By the time my company arrived, the hour was late, i beat them home, and life was doing well. Not great, but manageable.
The next morning, off we go to breakfast, to an old haunt i once visited often. This time, i had something completely different for breakfast and that was good. All seems to be going okay. Then we leave and the girl is glum. Why? The 'rents are driving around and around, looking at houses for rent, houses for sale, houses for the big move here. Here, where the girl will be leaving all her friends.
So i suggest we drive by the arts high school, the high school she'll most likely attend. And we do. And as we drive along the canopied road, with the old brick houses and white-columned porches, she brightens some. As do i.

Good. That's good! The end of the pity party... right?

Not quite. Remember, i had been "looking forward" to my event for a couple of weeks, if "looking forward" can be used here. Actually, i had been in deep dread of it, but held it in the same regard as a mammogram or pap smear: a necessary bit of messiness to be dealt with and done for the greater good. You know? Some warped rite of passage from where i was five years ago to the time now, on my way to the future.
So, we finish Saturday, the day of the damned, doing sunshine events. Down to the river for First Saturday, eyeballing the wares for sale. Ducking into a local joint for drinks (another margarita) and brief shade. Down to the beach for wave-crashing and shell hunting. Dinner at the place where the "elite eat in their bare feet." And the day was done for my guests, but I did a quick change and was out the door for a margarita and karaoke.
"Ain't No Sunshine"
"Just My Imagination"
"I Dig Rock and Roll Music"

Those don't sound like downbeat songs. I would have expected stuff like "Wake Up Call" and "Something In The Air Tonight" and "Before He Cheats." "Every Breath You Take." That type of song, all songs you've done before.

You know, I had, earlier in the week, planned to sing those very songs. But I decided on - the Wednesday? the Thursday? - to do more upbeat songs instead, try to jumpstart my glass-half-full way of thinking. And it really did help. So did talking to Elvis, one of the regulars there. And by the time i returned home, life was better, but not yet normal.
I wakened at five to the realization that i was going to be out of toilet paper and had four people in my house. Off to get it, then back, and back to bed for an hour or two. I sent my bff and her family off to the morning beach and stayed home to mope, getting it out of my system enough to have lunch with them and my first niece at a barbeque joint.
Then my niece went back home and they went to visit his dad. I went to enjoy a quiet time at the stadium with some regulars and my boys of summer. That was relaxing, being outside but in the shade, feeling the breeze kicked up by the huge propellers overhead, drinking in the sounds of summer.
No need to go home afterward, either. A ghost tour had been arranged to entertain and inform the three from northwest of Atlanta. I headed downtown to catch a missed wave for talk and dinner. And there i was, kvetching about five year marks of odious occasions and ill-timed visitors and whatever else that came out of my mouth. And he said to me, you would have rather had the pity party?

Seriously? Those exact words?

No, i paraphrased, but that was the essence of what he said. And i realized how very selfish i had been, to have thought that rolling around in mope would be preferable to spending that time in the company of those who know and love me. And how those particular people knew best how to handle my insanity, when to stay close, when to back off... but not too far. Because the bff not only knows where the bodies are buried, but helped me put them there.
Thanks, gfriend.

rorschach moment

Rorschach
1927, in reference to Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach (1885-1922), who developed the personality test using ink blots. The town so named on the Swiss side of Lake Constance is from an early form of German. Röhr "reeds" + Schachen "lakeside."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper



Breathe. Breathe again, deeper and slower this time, like you mean it. Feel better? That's the power of the blue and green marble, being itself and restoring your soul along the way.

breathing again

Breathing is something we do with that reptilian part of our brain, a reflex action coerced by the need of our cells for oxygen for their many metabolic manipulations of materials we have ingested. Thank God we don't have to consciously command our lungs to inhale! Fill with fresh air, allow the hemoglobin to trap the oxygen and carry it away in the bloodstream! Then exhale! Blow out the carbon dioxide waste created by the cells, empty the lungs before the issuing of another command to inhale! How on earth would we have time for the many thoughts we think if we had to consciously take care of breathing and the beating of the heart and the working of the liver and kidneys and ... you get the picture.

Concentrating on the act of breathing is something I do to calm myself when I'm agitated, whether due to nervousness or anger or excitement or some other intense feeling. I usually close my eyes and allow only those words directly connected to respiration to visually enter my mind. Inhale. Hold it - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale. I can even use that mantra to get to sleep on those occasions when my brain won't shut up and let me rest. If all other thoughts are banished and only those few are at the forefront, what else is there to do but sleep? N'est-ce pas?

But there is an antiquated meaning of respiration that has nothing to do with the physiological exchange of gases between the lungs and the atmosphere. "Relief from toil or suffering" is the phrase which best describes the obsolute definition; "taking a breather" is another and the one I think of when I need a break from life as I know it. Setting aside - completely - all work-related issues, all worries, all overbearing, nigh impossible loads so as to simply enjoy being alive in the present moment. That's why every so often I "run away" from home, most often to a sandy, salty shoreline to breathe, to arise from sleep unencumbered by the cares of the workday. Even if I am granted but a single morning away from the responsibilities of my life, that will suffice to make me feel calmer, more at peace with the world and all in it.

Breathe.