Breathe

I'm tired.

I was tired as I changed into my running clothes. I had to sink down onto my bed to put on my shoes. I gave up tying them once, took a minute to hold my head in my hands, counted to ten, and tried again. Then I stood up and stretched and left the house via the hundred-and-some stairs that run down from the 5th floor. That's not my favorite part of the run-- I turned my ankle a couple of weeks ago and it still creaks a little if I land funny. It's sore, but I'm keeping an eye on it. It's been all right.

I hadn't run in more than a week. I would have gone out Friday or Saturday but my bag wasn't back from the airport yet and my running shoes were in that bag, packed in my luggage despite the fact that I did no running while I was back in North Carolina. I meant to, but the best laid plans... But that time away from exercise ended up with my body protesting every step of the mile out to the swan pond and my lungs actively rebelling a quarter of the way into the mile back.

When I'm out practice, the rebellion is all I feel. I forget how to breathe. I know that there's some way to breathe like an athlete, where you're using your lungs and your diaphragm and not trapping all the oxygen in your panicked larynx and trachea and I know that I must have known this in the past because I've been athletic before and been able to breathe breaths that don't sound like the gasp of a brokenhearted teenager between sobs, but I don't remember how. I'll look up a youtube video about it or something. I just gotta practice.

And practice I will, until the right way to breathe becomes second nature, until my lungs get the oxygen they need to power my legs and my arms and my heart as I run. I'll find a rhythm and I'll get better. I kinda have to. I've put down money for this half marathon in October, so I've got skin in the game and I know I'll make good on this promise I made to myself. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's going to be worth it regardless of how the race itself turns out. It's forced me to take on a healthy habit, which has forced several unhealthier ones to the back burner. I can feel my body changing. I've watched my attitude change. It's made me go outside, where all the people and the nature are.

But that's where I want the life lesson here to end because I am tired. I am so tired. Maybe it's because I hadn't realized how exhausting the cycle of grief, anger, and apathy is after a mass shooting. Maybe it's because I was already worn down by all the words and spin from this election cycle, from this year. I want to keep my Facebook closed and to stay off Twitter because the things I read either sadden me or make me feel guilty for not being sad. Or angry.

We need to learn how to breathe again.

Breathing means taking in the air around you and letting it fill you with life, reveling in the dependence that signifies humanity.

Breathing means letting others into you, pulling in molecules that have travelled through the lungs of your neighbor and their neighbor and trees and plants, connecting every respiring thing on this Earth together, taking the same atmosphere in and letting it back out.

Breathing is preparation.

Breathing is restoration.

Breathing is what allows us to live toward the next second, is what lets us sing or speak or shout, is what powers our muscles, our brains, steeps our blood, this same blood we all share, in the oxygen we need to do great feats of might or mind. Every human who has ever loved or lost or held or hated has needed to breathe. Everyone who has died, everyone who has killed, everyone who has been held on the sidelines while the world around us crumbles, we all breathe. We have been given an abundance of the stuff of life, a thin skin around our globe that has been more than enough, and if we had only thought about it, maybe we could have been united in the miracle of breath, of humanity, before the trigger was pulled.

Breathe with me.

Pull humanity into your lungs and let it back out again. Thank it for all the good it can do, for all the good it has done in your life. Reach out to the Greater Than that you know and hold out your hands for the burden to be placed on your heart. Sing to yourself that love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love. Breathe it. Believe it. Inhale your connection to this world and hold it, its fragility and fragile people, and do it again and again and again and again and again until it is second nature to to count every other human on this planet as your brother and your sister, your neighbor, someone who you would never abandon or harm or ignore regardless of sexual identity, race, nationality, religion, or class. Breathe until you realize who you are.

Then stand up.

Listen, loves, I know we're all so very tired, but stand up with me and work these muscles until we're fit again. Let's care for our injuries now with deep compassion but not let them stop us from standing again. I know it seems impossible, it seems like anger and hate will always win, but we won't know if love can win until we've started the race, until we have actively stretched out the limbs of our care and started using them, watching the change it makes in our society, among us people, as we use these muscles of love day after day after day. Let's earn our exhaustion not with bearing the burden of disappointing thoughts but with action.

Let's breathe in and begin.

*************

Update: I'm glad to have seen so many people reading this. I think we're all looking for a way to cope and engage and I hope I've helped. If you're ready to start stretching those muscles with me, here are a few concrete ways to do that: 

-Talk to your loved ones and friends. Check in with anybody you know who's a member of the LGBTQ community and offer them your love and support. You might not know anybody in Orlando, but you do know someone who could have been killed in an attack like this. Offer food, lend an ear, give love.
-Attend a vigil. Have a quick google and then go out as you can. Visible outpourings of support can and do make a difference in how we see each other. 

-Donate blood. Not everyone can, so if you meet the qualifications the center nearest you sets out and you okay with needles, head over. Supplies are typically lower in the summer anyway and tragedies like this just make the need greater. 

-Donate to Orlando. Just make sure you do your homework so you know that your money's going where you want it to go.

-Contact your member of Congress. Nothing changes unless we use our voices. Take your time and think deeply about what's happened and what's been happening, and then use your voice. Talk to your representatives at every level of government, but also talk to your family and friends. Tragedies happen and we can't control that but we can control how we react. Engage.