Deep Breathing
My mental intruder awakens and now it’s tearing down the barriers I built. I can hear the wall crumbling.
My chest weighs a metric ton. Pressure mounts on my shoulders and my brain feels three times its normal size. My thoughts intensify and I lose my footing as I stumble backward and land on the couch.
Inhale deep and count to four. Hold your breath for seven seconds. Exhale while counting to eight.
My cat Jasmine is prancing around the house and I can hear her yowling. My other cat, Gojira, is sitting on the couch staring at me. I look over at him. Our eyes meet.
Start counting down. Five things you can see.
“I can see Gojira’s eyes. I can see the couch. I can see the pictures hanging on the wall. I can see the television. I can see my reflection in the blank screen.”
My brain drops a few pounds.
Keep counting down. Four things you can feel.
“I can feel the cushion beneath me. I can feel my feet on the ground. I can feel my hair tickling my shoulders. I can feel the loose thread from my pajama shorts on my inner thigh.”
My shoulders relax a bit.
You’re not done yet. Three things you can hear.
“I can hear Jasmine yowling. I can hear her footsteps pacing back and forth. I can hear my neighbors playing music outside.”
I’m almost to the end. Two things you can smell.
“I can smell – fuck – I can smell… I smell-”
I lost it.
“I can’t fucking smell anything because there is no smell,” I shout to my cat.
I’ve always hated this part of the process.
My brain starts to feel heavy again. Keep going.
One thing you can taste.
“I can taste garlic from lunch earlier.”
Inhale deep and count to four. Hold your breath for seven seconds. Exhale while counting to eight.
I close my eyes and gently sway my body back and forth. I tilt my head up and open my eyes.
Exhale again.
I dry my eyes and get back on my feet, hoping I can continue on with my day. I end up pacing in circles around the house.
Jasmine is still in the kitchen yowling. I walk over to check on her. She’s staring at the ceiling, her eyes following something, as if there is movement up there. I look up.
“You’re seeing ghosts again,” I say to her. I go back to walking in circles.
My thoughts are an invasive species that bore into my brain. My mind is a forbidden forest full of unimaginable horrors only I can see. Repetitive images display on the mental projector in my head and the same phrases scream at me until I shrink down to bite-size. I’ve always been a snack for the monster inside of me.
Imagine the devil forging your signature on an unbreakable contract. No matter how many times you burn it or tear it to shreds, it pieces itself back together again.
Existing has become a nuisance and the most toxic relationship in my life is the one I have with myself.
“Think of it as a monster,” my therapist once told me. “Whenever you give in, you’re feeding the monster. When you feed it, it just keeps getting bigger and stronger.”
“So I need to starve the monster,” I replied.
“That’s exactly what you have to do. Starve the monster,” he said.
Twenty minutes have passed and I’m still walking in circles, talking to myself, yelling at my brain and telling it to shut up. I have so much work to get done and no mental time to do it. I’ve got nothing else to do; there is an ongoing pandemic and like the rest of America, I’m cooped up in the house. I have clients to call and past phone calls to document. The thoughts grow more powerful by the minute, making it nearly impossible to complete basic tasks. They manifest in ways that distort my reality.
That book I’ve been meaning to finish? The second I open it I can read my thoughts on the page. That documentary I’ve been saying I ‘d watch? As soon as I turn it on, I can see the thoughts on the screen. Sleeping is the only cure, except for when l see the thoughts there, too.
Living with a monster embedded into my prefrontal cortex is more than just a curse. It’s a reminder that God isn’t real. No loving, all-powerful and all-knowing supernatural being would sinisterly bestow such a disease upon its creation.
I’m starting to feel dizzy, light-headed, and my hands are shaking. I mainlined four cups of coffee in a hope to motivate myself to work, but I’ve been out of my medication for three days.
“You’re not real,” I repeat over again in my head.
“I am not my thoughts,” I tell myself.
Suicidal ideation knocks on the door. I welcome it in, because it’s the only thing that distracts me from the other thoughts.
I look over to the right and see my pill bottles on the table. I can hear them calling to me, tempting me. I imagine obeying them with a bottle of vodka, then my phone rings; my digital appointment with my therapist started a few minutes ago.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say.
“Well, what do you mean? What makes you feel you can’t do this?”
“I feel weak. They’re just so much bigger than I am. I continue to shrink more every day.”
He reminds me of the monster analogy. He tells me to think of it as its own entity
“Talk back to it,” he said. “Sometimes, you need to treat it like a bully. You need to stand up to it.”
“Sometimes, I worry that I’ll relapse. What if I go back to my teenage ways?”
“You won’t. You haven’t done those things since you were a teen. You were young and didn’t know what was happening. You’re an adult now, and you have it under control,” he said.
He’s telling me about other methods to calm the anxiety. I drift off, remembering the days when the thoughts first started to lurk in the deep corners of my head.
I look over to the mirror, and I lock eyes with the girl staring back at me.
I study her face; the gash on the side of her neck, the dry blood underneath her fingernails, the bald spot on her scalp.
I hear a familiar voice say, “You know, you really need to stop doing that. It’ll get infected.” I picture his face, his white coat and white pants, his dark hair and dark eyes. He walks towards the door, looks back at me, and then exits the room, leaving me alone with these white walls.
I hate the girl I see in the mirror, and the audacity she has to come back and haunt me.
“Does that make sense at all, Sara?” I look back at my phone.
“Yes, it makes perfect sense,” I tell my therapist.
The hour is up. We say our goodbyes. I put my phone down and sit back on the couch.
It’s been sixteen years. I want to say I’ve grown stronger and resilient, but I haven’t figured out if that’s just another lie I tell myself. I daydream of being normal, of having a properly working brain, of living life without a monster attached to me. I imagine a night where I don’t have to take pills before bed, or a Friday at noon where I don’t need to talk to my therapist. I long for a sense of normalcy.
I look up to the ceiling.
Inhale deep and count to four. Hold your breath for seven seconds. Exhale while counting to eight.
Sara Ali is a freelance journalist based in Niagara County. You probably won’t spot her in public, she’s most likely hanging out in her living room with her cats while binge eating candy and watching b-grade horror movies, or making resin pieces in her garage. You can find her on Instagram instead: sara_li91