Blue In the Face

I hold my breath.

It has become an interesting behavior that has developed over the last few years.

It creates a sensation that pauses the anxiety in my head and chest for a few brief moments.

I don't know how it started.

I know that I think intrusive thoughts when I do it.

I wonder what it would be like if my body stopped responding to my lack of breathing.

Would I stop and pass out.

Would the world around me finally stop existing, because

I hold my breath.

And I wonder what it all means when I think intrusive thoughts.

All the while, holding the breath tightly in my chest, 

Hoping that I can keep it in long enough to banish any resistance from my airways.

The noise in my head, rings like a constant hum or white noise that drowns everything within earshot.

I hold my breath.

I sneer and wonder.

I think about all of those friends and loved ones who once meant so much to me, who cannot be bothered to know that every now and again, I hold my breath in hopes that it will trigger an exit.

I can't tell them that I hold my breath, because they wouldn't understand how tired I am.

They wouldn't believe me when I tell them that I am exhausted from existing and how there is really only one outcome for a life wasted.

I hold my breath.

I get by.

I show cowardice by being complicit and weakness by being unmotivated.

There is no strength in getting up, dusting yourself off, and trying again.

Still,

I get up, dust myself off, and keep trying.

Choking on the dust of every failed plan, every failed relationship, every failed attempt to be something more than I never was.

I hold my breath

Hoping, with all irony because I gave up on hope so many lifetimes ago,

I hope that maybe there will be a light.

Maybe, there might be a white knight.

Something better is most definitely on the horizon and hope has said "if you just hold on a bit longer, it will come to you,"

"Just hold your breath."

And I know that the distance from here to there, the distance that used to be from then until now, looks exactly the same.

The same people, tell me the same things, and I see ghosts in the randomness that is my everyday life like old lovers, who just can't quite die.

I hold my breath.

If forever would come,

Would I miss it, because I was too busy punching the clock.

Would I be somewhere, standing on a corner, blocked by a city bus, hidden from forever's touch

all because what should have been, could never be.

And I just couldn't get there quick enough to take my place.

I hold my breath and I think of him.

I think of her.

And of them and the mess that would eventually turn into a two day ordeal to finalize and compartmentalize everything that was a reminder of who I used to be.

To donate, to hoard, to sell, or to dispose of...all the things that I held close to my heart, would be nothing more than fodder for those who would mourn or mock the space I occupied. 

And they would laugh at the time I did something funny or said something clever.

They would rejoice in my passing once a year until I become a distant memory on the minds of all those who remain, outlived and days numbered.

I hold my breath.

And the main thing that I want to accomplish is finding my smile.

It doesn't come often enough.

I don't think it ever will again.