The Traitor

Hokay, here's hoping this is in the right spot. Recently I attended a writing workshop, and the person running it gave us this prompt: "I didn't know I was afraid until after it happened." I originally wrote it so all of the "I"s were "you's" but a friend suggested I switch it to first person. Comments? Thank you.

The Traitor

Breathing should come naturally. For most of us, it does. It’s a simple, involuntary act that is repeated an innumerable amount of times. It’s inevitable, sustaining, and expansive.

But to someone with asthma, it’s a hardship, an obstacle, and instead of sustaining, it’s life-threatening. It interferes, destroys, and strangles the ability to think.

More specifically, to an athlete, asthma has intense effects. As a lifelong soccer player and a sufferer of asthma, there are times when I find myself, instead of battling it out on the field, dueling with my lungs in a war to win back the smooth, natural occurrence of inhaling and exhaling.

A set of cones is a punishment, but it is also an opportunity to prove to myself that I can master my body with my mind. When my mind is lost to the ragged, disjointed pattern of drawing wheezy breath after wheezy breath through closed, suffocating lungs, however, is when my problem begins.

During the attack, my focus is single-minded in every way – air, and how I can get it, right now, this very second. Blurred vision, fragmented thoughts, I feel as though I have no control, but I am not afraid. Not yet. That comes later. Now, I need oxygen. I can feel it; it’s there, but not the effects of it. No relaxing sensation that tells me that I’m going to be okay. Just the overwhelming in-and-out, hands over my head, keep my lungs open, it’s all in my head if I just calm down.

And with rest, I do recover. Slowly, not always surely, but shakily for certain. The attack leaves its ugly mark on me. Stripped of what seems to be a basic human right, I look back and realize that something consistently depended upon, something involuntarily vital, has turned traitor. Stabbed me in the back, or the lung, so to say, so that all of my determination, my willpower, is shattered. The unspoken covenant between my lungs and my mind is broken, like the inward courage I feel when I take something so simple for granted.

Now, I am afraid.