Learning to Breathe

Learning to Breathe

Up until a few years ago, I used to think it was silly when I would complain to someone about something trivial and they would say to me, “At least you have your health”--as if that were supposed to be some kind of consolation. I guess I thought I’d always be healthy and besides, at eighteen years old, you don’t really consider or plan around it when looking at your future. There’s school, love life, social life, and work—no room for bad health, really. I had always just considered my health to be somewhere ticking along in the background, until I reached the magical age of forty, when it would totally fail and I would start to experience all those awful things that happen to you when you get “old”. I’m trying to say that I pretty much took my health for granted. My life felt perfect at the time. It was a few weeks before Christmas of my freshman year in college. I had a wonderful boyfriend, tolerable job, only two finals left to take, and all of my Christmas shopping done. Breathing was pretty much the last thing on my mind…until that snowy night in December.

It was a night that started like any other night. My department store job at Sears left much to be desired, but the pay was alright. As expected for an evening in a mall during the Christmas season, the store was like a madhouse and the customers behaved as though they should be committed to one. Around seven p.m., I got a bit overwhelmed with all the festivities, so I found a quiet corner in the back of my department, sat down in the floor, and began to fold sweaters. I folded for what seemed like forever. As I kept leaning over to place sweaters on the display, I found it was becoming harder and harder to move my right arm. I mostly ignored this, chalking it up to zero sleep and long hours at work, until I happened to look up and see that all the clothing in the store had become one big blur. Wow, I thought to myself, I must be really tired. I blinked and decided to take a break.