When You Just Can’t Breath Anymore – 10 {UNITE Link-Up}

“I can’t breath”, I tell my husband, sipping cold water. It does nothing to eleviate my misery.

“Huuuu…Huuu….Huu…” Each breathe gets shorter. Air fills less and less my lungs, as I ache for more of the mountains I once knew.

In Washington, air was ample, full, bouniful, pure. The mountains and trees purified so much…

But in abundance sometimes we are most lacking…

But don’t even realize it.

Here, I could feel my lungs tighten.

“Just relax”, he tells me. “It will be o.k.” He promises.

Normally, I find safety in believing him, but this time I doubted.

“You said before we came, each hotel has oxygen in it?” I prodded.

He rebutals, “I already checked…this one is out. They used all the oxygen for a lady the night before.”

Panic strickened me. “O.k. I will be o.k.” I tried working myself into some positive-type, will-myself ceremony, praying hope might trump the facts of my deflating lungs.

My head spun, so I sat down on the bed. The glass french doors open for air, I could hear people laughing, a whole host of people passing the cobblestone streets I had loved so much when I first came here.

“Why did I go on that tour?” I questioned myself? “They said to lay low, stay out of the sun? They told us to not walk to much the first day here in Cusco.”

But I had not listened. Like the cocoa leaf they gave me at the airport…I didn’t heed their warning. My mind reeled back to a whole of times in my life when I did not listen.

Yes, I had been an expert at pride. I had worked and refined it…even tricked myself at times, thinking I was being humble, when my heart knew it was exposed and masking true pride.

I didn’t listen. Why did I choose not to listen?

Oh, how I wish I had some cocoa leaves now, to expand my lungs and make way for breathing.

I lay back on the bed, breathes inflated only a small percent of my lungs. “I can’t get air”, I panic.

“It’s o.k. just relax”, he keeps telling me.

“I think I need oxygen.” I reinforce.

“I will go find some.”

At the sound of the door slamming, you might think that my body would start relaxing, my body settling, my spirit comforted at the possibility of soon having air…

But the opposite happened.

Thoughts started becoming unclear. My parents, and childhood, and children kept surfacing…Ideas of what I had done right and wrong…

The notions of how much time I had waisted wondering and worrying…wasn’t this journey simply about love…

Loving people like the homeless man who wouldn’t even look up at me, sitting in the shadow of the steeple?

“I waisted so much”….a glutten of time, talent, resources. I had hoarded and gloated. Boasted and riveting without purpose or goodness.

So much of my life had been drifting or rising to prove my worth of existence. I had been a magnet of selfishness…

Needing time and attention from everybody for everything…

Why had I been so bend on survival?

Would my husband actually be able to find some oxygen? Would I die here as I imagined?

My fear and nightmares started coming to my mind. That conversation with my mom about how I don’t think I will come back alive from this place called, “Cusco”.

“I feel like I am going to die”, I had told her. Was I prophecying my own future?

I waited. More noise from the cobblestone streets below. This time it aggrevated and distracted as I carefully and thoughtfully tried pulling air into my lungs…

It got harder and harder to breathe. Oh how I wished I had the strength to stand and shut those glass doors.

My husband ran back in the door. “I can’t find any. I went to every hotel I could and nobody has any oxygen.”

A loud siren tormented my ears. “Was that someone else suffering from oxygen deprivation due to the altitude of Cusco? How many were sitting in this city, struggling for air.” I wondered.

“O.k.” I said outoud, trying to calm myself. Being brave, I tried standing to shut the glass doors.

My husband was there, and he always made me brave…

My head spun, my legs feeble, I grabbed onto the bed before tumbling to the floor. My legs were tingling now. I sat back on the bed…door loud and still open.

So numb, I couldn’t seem to move or touch my legs. Were they even there? I looked down to check.

“Honey, my legs and arms feel wierd. They are tingling….I can’t breath.” I said again, as if he didn’t know.

“I know. I am sorry. I ran through all the streets. There isn’t any oxygen…” His shallow breathe muttered as he stood to shut the glass doors.

My lungs tightened even more, my mind slipping in our and out of consciousness…I couldn’t move.

Would I make it even one more day?

(This post is part of a series. You can find previous posts here)

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