There was a time in my life when exercise was called “having fun.” I remember abruptly when it ended. My twin sister and I were chasing each other, laughing, lost in some game, and then we ran to our older sister to see what she was doing.
“Gross!” she said. “You’re breathing hard. It’s disgusting!”
It stopped me in my tracks. Probably both of us. Over time it became a familiar refrain: “you’re both such disgusting mouth-breathers.”
And so now, I suffocate at the top of every staircase, holding my breath against the fear of breathing heavy. I struggle for minutes after, trying to release my breath in tiny gasps, which lead to more deep breaths, more holding, a stutter-strangulation until my heart rate slows.
Athletics should have cured me of this. I remember, one year I was doing 100 push-ups every day. I had to stop in the middle of a party to get a few in or I would forget to meet my total. A male friend admonished me, “What is this? I can’t hear you breathing!” He then demonstrated his own push-ups with big, exaggerated wooshes of breath. “That’s how you do it!”
“I can’t,” I told him, and was unjustifiably angry at him because he’d never had to live under the dictates of Not Offending. The pressure women are under to always look and smell and sound appealing. This is our first job, whatever other jobs we do.
This is performing femininity, for me. Not breathing.
I’ve stopped apologizing in meetings or equivocating my statements. I’ve tried to excise the social corset my own mind creates. But I can’t make myself just breathe.
I ride my bike to work every day and hold my breath as others pass me and hate myself for being so slow I can be passed, but I’m suffocating, still.
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