Breathe

"Breathe" is what they tell us to do to calm down, feel better, and control the pain when something hurts. It is what we constantly do without thinking and keeps us alive. 

But, it is ironic when what keeps you alive and you cannot stop doing hurts. 

Last night it hurt to BREATHE. I could not take a deep breath. I went up the stairs, and the pain I felt in my chest was as if someone was pushing my chest from the inside and trying to inflate my lungs made it worse. It was like trying to blow up a balloon inside a wooden box with no room to expand. It was as if blowing up the lungs to catch some air was stinging and hurt more than letting the air that gives me life in. I lay down with a heating pad on my chest and just wanted to cry, but when I was about to cry, that hurt even more, so I didn't cry because it was more painful. I tried falling asleep, breathing very lightly and fast, and avoiding deep breaths to minimize the pain. I knew that with every breath, I was letting less air in, which was not optimal, but this was the only way of avoiding breathing 'normally,' which hurt.

With this, I only thought about the irony of what was hurting and how I could not stop doing it because it is what keeps me alive. For example, when my knee hurts, I can stop moving it so it won't hurt. But this time, breathing was what hurt, and I could not stop breathing to take the pain away. I fell asleep thinking about how tiny and powerless a disease can make you feel and how hard it can be to understand it. And even like this, I am still learning. I think Lupus can be like those people and situations you never get. Those that you don't understand why they happen, their way of acting, thinking, sometimes they're there, and others leave and disappear. Lupus is changing and unpredictable.

However, in the middle of Lupus' unpredictability, it also teaches me and speaks up. Every time I have symptoms, my body tries to say something. I think that it was not letting me breathe without pain is a way of saying, "hey, stop and let me breathe." It's its way of speaking up. 

The body is so ironic and wise that it makes breathing painful to tell me: hey, slow down a bit, take a breath in life because I need to breathe, and at this pace, it hurts a bit.