forgetting how to breathe

I am writing from experience when I share with you dear reader the difference between a woman who returns to herself on a regular basis and a woman who does not.

The first is a woman I have lost and as I sit here putting these words together the best way I can, I struggle to remember what that first woman looks like or feels like. The second woman however, I can talk about easily as this is who I am in this very moment.

This woman who does not return to herself is the one who is constantly running in one direction or another, internally and externally. She is busy all day long with the many tasks each new day brings, barely having enough time to sit and sip on a cup of tea whilst it still steams from the top.

Her face is fixed, focused if you like, her jaw is tight and her eyes tired. She rarely smiles from her heart anymore.

Her hair, if she has any left, falls out of its clip on a regular basis each time revealing the unattended ends. She whips it back up in a flash never bothering to even glance in the mirror when she is done.

Her clothes no longer represent who she is, rather they are practical and most of the time comfortable. Sometimes she stares in the wardrobe with despair as her eyes desperately search for something she likes. Not one item can she find. “What would I like to have hanging in here she asks herself?”, she doesn’t even know anymore.

Her mind is constantly filled with an uneasiness that she can never explain. All she knows is that life is unsatisfactory and passing fast. She fears she may die feeling this way, unsatisfied with life and all its contents.

Every time she catches a glimpse of something inside that inspires her to turn in a different direction and move towards her becoming, she is chased back the other way again.

She slowly but surely loses the ability to communicate. She nods and smiles an empty smile when she needs to but ever so quickly the focused strain returns to her face and her lips seal tightly together once more.

She even loses the ability to communicate with herself. She tries in vain to hear what her body is trying so desperately to tell her but the sounds are muffled and she can no longer make any sense of what she hears.

Her breath no longer fills her with life, it merely prolongs her death and her heart beats to a rhythm she can no longer dance to, leaving the task of loving the other an impossible one.

She doesn’t know where to turn next so she keeps on running in one direction or another keeping far too busy to reflect on such sad things.

She cries inside. She can’t tell you why … she doesn’t really know.

She moves through her days in a mechanical way, she is becoming a machine, not a woman.

Who is she now, this woman who walks through life like a corpse?
Void of feeling, empty and numb.

She needs to return to herself, somewhere in her heart she knows this all too well but she doesn’t know how anymore.

She is lost in this strange place and fears she will never find her way back.

She needs to breathe, she has forgotten how....
Too long attached to the fake placenta.... she needs to breathe on her own again.