Breathe

The catch and release of breath. Take a drag of air to refresh. Exhale to cleanse. Do this continuously for the next four years.

A person involuntarily draws breath more than 25,000 times a day. When air enters the lungs, it is called “inspiration.” In my sister language, Spanish, the phenomenon is known as “aspirar,” the word for inhale, which can also mean to aspire, aim, or simply breathe. I love those multiple meanings. Breath stirs up hope as it oxygenates the body. When air is released from the lungs, it is called “expiration,” in Spanish, “espirar” – exhale, breathe, breathe out, expire. I do not like those multiple meanings, which leaves me asking: do we die a little more between breaths?

Breathing is barely noticeable until something goes wrong. I remember when my mother had a bout of pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining of the lungs. Breathing was excruciating for her. I was six, and I still remember how she tried so hard not to take a breath. In hindsight, the struggle to accomplish those 25,000 daily breaths appeared insurmountable.

“Estoy asfixiando – I am asphyxiating,” my mother croaked in Spanish, her first language – the default language of her panic.

And here we are on the verge of four very long years during which we must catch and release long breaths to sustain ourselves. Four years. Four. Years. How spoiled will things be by that expiration date?

My breathing sabotages me when my mind is hopped up on adrenalin. Asfixiando – the “x” in the middle of the word looms large, dangerous even. We expel carbon dioxide when we exhale, a waste product the body produces. But if we don’t exhale completely, some carbon dioxide remains in the body, causing us to yawn or become fatigued.

Here's another lesson my insomnia-induced research turned up. If carbon dioxide remains in the body, it affects the nervous system and cardiac functioning. Learning this put me on high alert, then hypervigilance. The heart pounds so loudly that vision blurs. I can’t hear above the bira, bira, bira of my heart, so I have to squint to see.

Anxiety often follows from an inciting incident. For example, Donald Trump, the president-elect, is among the first of the many inciting incidents I expect in the next four years. The panic that usually follows anxiety almost always happens to me during the bluest-blackest part of the night. Here is what has had me sit bolt upright in my bed: his cabinet appointments, the cozying up to dictators, the nuclear codes. Bira, bira, bira. My heartbeats are deafening.

Inhale. Aspira.

A physiology lesson I cobbled together from my research: a river of adrenaline pollutes the intake of oxygenated breath. My breath becomes as uneven and jumpy as Morse code. The clonazepam melting under my tongue eventually lowers my heart rate, and I roll into the mantra from the best break-up song ever: “I will survive, I will survive.” But what did we as a country break up with? Democracy, the Rule of Law, common decency? All of it?

Deportations, obscene cabinet and Supreme Court appointments, shameful foreign policy. Inspiration, expiration, aspira, expira.

But here is a balm that my wise friend and teacher, Diane Zinna, posted the day after the election results:

We will protect each other. We will be there for each other like never before. We will seek out the goodness in every person. We will remind each other that goodness still exists. We will make art that will remind each other of our humanity. We are connected tonight, and we will stay connected.