My body doesn’t know how to breathe properly. Apparently, my lungs were never briefed on their job description. When they read the assembly directions, they skipped a few steps and posted inadequate instructions in my brain. So, they have never been able to hold a full chest’s worth of air in them. Despite all the space they have been given to pull oxygen from the air, they eyeball it and say, let’s use less.

My brain did its best with the chicken scratch explainer that my lungs sent over, but there was a lot of room for interpretation. The message was received that the lungs must always work, even without my conscious input, but the price for that feature is that when my brain gets stressed, my lungs are the ones tasked with telling me.

My lungs were assembled in such a way as to make running away really difficult in the first place, but when one of the four Fs hit – Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn – they squeeze down even further, aching and refusing to do their job.

I knew you were the one for me because you never took my breath away. Instead, you found a secret catch in my sternum to unhook my ribs and swing them open. You created space inside me and breathed into me to inflate my lungs to the most expansive they have ever been.

Sometimes, when the panic sets in and my lungs shrink in on themselves, I beckon you over and you lie on top of me and push the air out of my useless lungs. You carefully crush me down into the mattress until my lungs can feel what it actually means to not be able to draw a full breath. You cage me in with your arms, your lips pressed to my hair, and I am stilled. My brain calms enough to re-read its directions and loosen its stranglehold on my lungs.

I tap your arm, and you roll off me. I turn over and breathe deep.