I Hate Deep Cleansing Breaths

Ok folks, here's the thing. We all know I'm a little mentally imbalanced. It isn't that I was born crazy. Well, to be perfectly honest, I've always been a little crazy, but before it was in the fun, spontaneous, unexpected crazy way. The good crazy. Now I'm just crazy-crazy, but as you all know, I am working on it. With my new BFF, Valium. If any of the Valium people are reading this, and want to sponsor my blog, do let me know, as I am your biggest fan. Seriously.

Ok, I digress. I need to join the gym. I really do, and I shall join, and soon,even though the gym I want to go to is crazy fucking expensive. I mean, for the price of this gym, I should get complimentary bikini waxes and massages by the hot male trainers, but, sadly, that is not included. It does, however, have a pool, and so in the spirit of health, I am going to go forth and get down with the geriatrics in the arthritis 10 am swim. Rock. I don't mind working out with a bunch of old people. In fact, once in college, my roommate got me to go to her gym for 3 months of this "body sculpting" class. Which is honestly a special kind of hell. It was an hour of crunches, lunges, and then arm workouts. This was in sunny Florida, home of freakishly large insects, and lots of old people. And every old lady in that class kicked my ass. We'd stumble out of the gym, light up a cigarette and go for a cool down shopping session at the local Super Wal Mart. Now, before you give me shit about Wal-Mart, let me tell you that once the Woolworths across from campus closed down, this was the ONLY place to shop for anything. So we'd hit Wal-Mart and go through the aisles filling our carts with the stuff we'd eat later. Gummy bears for me, cereal for her. Sadly folks, this was probably the healthiest time of my life.

So I have been to the gym, I've had my ass kicked, cardiac-ally speaking by a 70 year old woman with large permed hair who wore full make up to work out, and I was ok with that.

I also took a somatopsychology class, and every 3rd lesson we would do Tai Chi. I liked Tai Chi, and it was more of a work out than I expected. At that time, I would really get into it, meditate, get stretchy, and whatnot. It was good.

Here's the thing. Since Ad died, I can't stand to be still with my thoughts. I don't sleep in anymore, once my eyes open, I'm up. No more languishing, sliding my leg across the sheets to find a cool spot, and flipping my pillow over for the same. Now, I hope out of bed, and when I knit or do mosaic, I watch tv or talk on the phone while I do it. Bottom line, I need to keep my mind as busy as possible, because letting it rest means accessing things I have no desire to remember.

One thing my therapist has really wanted me to do is deep breathing exercises. I keep telling him I can't. Recently, he asked me to close my eyes and take some deep cleansing breaths. The first one wasn't so bad. The second was was ok, and with the third one, I started feeling uncomfortable. It was probably around breath 15, when tears started rolling down my cheeks, that he said to stop. He believes me now. Apparently, he could see my shoulders continue to rise and rise without relaxing, my hands slowly curled into fists, and my breathing got very shaky.

I didn't notice these things, because I was busy trying not to have a complete freak-out, but it brought home an interesting realization. What the professionals like to call "a break through."

I am not comfortable inside my own body. Doesn't that just suck? I mean, it's not such a surprise. Physically, in the past three years I've developed 2 auto-immune diseases, I crushed my ankle and was bedridden for three months, I had a horrid steroid reaction that made me look like a pregnant bearded lady crossed with a gremlin that had just gotten wet (fat pads on my back). And then I watched as my husband died, and my dad got cancer, and oh, fuck me. Why would I like any part of this body?

Before, at least the mental was ok, you know? Apart from my vampire-like avoidance of mirrors when I was huge and bloated with no discernible neck and a beard that my waxer (to her credit, she was right) refused to wax off, claiming I'd then always have it.

But now, my body is fucked, I never know how I'll feel, how much pain I'll be in, how tired. I'm jabbing myself in the thigh regularly with needles, which has gotten a little tougher lately because I've lost some of the extra weight I'd put on trying to quit smoking and don't have that much fat in my thighs. Which normally would be a GOOD thing, but it makes it harder to find some nice fat to jab that needle into, and I fear I will soon be bending over and begging friends to jab a needle in my ass. Now, that will be an interesting friend test, don't you think?

On top of the physical blech, I'm kind of an emotional wreck. So much so, I can't do deep calming breathing! What kind of special crazy do you have to be to not be able to handle deep cleansing breathing?!

This kind of crazy. But that's ok.