Excerpt - Breathless

Years ago, I started work on a short called "Airless" - a sci fi detective piece, not "very" SF, you should pardon the descriptor making it sound like I want to distance myself from the genre. It was set during an investigation in which breath-evidence was key to the murder at hand. The premise (the extent to which this was SF) was that breath absorbs into the walls of the rooms we spend time in; and that somehow this has become quantifiable and measurable. The writing was good, but I had no idea where to go with it.

I have some more work I want to find some way to incorporate. I didn't know it was related until walking my dog tonight; so it isn't in any shape to fit. But my wee brain cogitates. Maybe it will give me some direction. Right now, it goes as far as "there can't be evidence ... because of this problem" - but that is a completely unformed premise at the moment ...


***


I am just typing. I’ve been trying to quantify ... what it’s like. What this IS.

And ... I can’t. It isn’t something I can explain. It isn’t even something I can describe. And I never have. I’ve never sat with anyone, not even you, and been able to tell what it is has happened to me. Because it’s too many things - but also because I can’t grasp a single aspect of it. I don’t even have enough control over whatever is wrong with me to ... so much as be able to say what it is.

I can’t put it into words.

This is beyond even comprehension, never mind expression.



And THAT. Is what it is like.

That is what being unable to get a breath is like.

It’s like being an infant, physically powerless and verbally powerless, and blotted out by the terror of helplessness. And knowing: there IS no help. No control, and no overcoming. Just inability. Impotence. Obliterating frustration.


It happens, sometimes - that I *can't* breathe. Not that it's hard to. That I simply. Flatly. Can’t. It’s not "hard": it’s not possible. You may have heard the phrase, oxygen starvation. Trying to come up with a way to describe this, I thought it was more like thirst. Thirst has an immediacy which hunger, as powerful as it is, somehow doesn’t. Thirst carries with it a desperation, which begins at a far earlier point in the pain than hunger gains such depth of power. Thirst is harrowing. Thirst is terrifying.

But even thirst doesn’t capture the essence of drowning in thin air.

Blank defeat isn’t benign. It’s as black as ignorance, it’s as impenetrable as water *just* too deep to swim to the surface fast enough, it’s as hideous as the mouth of the tiger bearing down on your neck. No escape. No relief. No hope. No point in fighting it.

Not only do I experience what it is to be unable to breathe ... years ago now, I learned what it was to just capitulate. To GO without breath, because I know I’m not going to get one, and to function until my body, inattentive, can regulate to the diet it can get. I admit defeat multiple times every week. I quit. I lose.

Raheema. G-d. It is the most terrifying thing. There is nothing so stark as to expect *nothing at all*. When I am forced to face it, I give in in another way. The power is overwhelming.

Yesterday I was unable to breathe; so acutely distressed I know I had to be audible to somebody around me. I couldn't have that. And so, strangled even though I wasn’t moving, I simply sat, and stopped, and strangled. There was nothing else for it. Defeat was relief. Anything else only made it worse. Anything else only made it real - by witness - and that was unbearable.

I can FEEL how small the human passageway for air is. I can feel my soft palate constricting to my tongue, the back of my throat misshaping itself, but almost spastic, almost convulsed beyond my control. Sometimes, I can no more swallow than breathe.

They call it fighting for air. For the life of me, I don’t understand that: there is no battle - no weapon ... no blood you can draw, no opponent. Only oneself.

When I was younger, I used to have a dream: that I was wrestling a giant cat. Lion, panther, cheetah - just anything bigger than I was - just anything with inarguable strength, immobilizing paws, indomitable weight. At the time, the dream had to do with the lack of control we have over life when we’re young, and the fear that teases out of our depths and tries to ignite us to cinders with.

This is *like* that ... but even less romantic. Nothing so beautiful as an actual preditor coming against you. Only the slowness of dream struggle. Only the preternatural impotence.

This is simply like being pressed to death. The torture of weight, stone by stone. It’s like being underneath a bag filled with a thousand pounds of water, slowly but slowly sinking down on your bones.

I would love to have a fight - something to *engage* ...

I have no fight. I have only the sight of succumbing.

And you know me.

I’m not good at giving up ...