treatyourselfwell:

“Breathe Again” - Sara Bareilles [Kaleidoscope Heart]

All I have, all I need
He’s the air I would kill to breathe
Hold my love in his hands
Still I’m searching for something
Out of breath I’m left hoping someday
I’ll breathe again

_____

Today I felt extremely restless and weepy.  Blame it on seeing someone I hadn’t seen in months.  Possibly on emotionally charged events of the day.

I realised that part of it could be because it’s been already been a year.  A year where for the briefest of moments I held his hand in mine, when we felt the same way and our heart moving to the same beat.  And as quickly as that moment came, it blew away with the rest of my old life.

I struggle, not with him.  Indeed I have all the security in our friendship I could ever hope for or imagine.  I appreciate him all the more now.  I still struggle from time to time because I cannot believe how quickly it all changed.  And how little by little I lose the image of his gentle face in my mind.  His voice is still as familiar, still potent when it comes to invoking feelings of nostalgia and joy.

I listen to this song and remember the day I had my heart broken further than I thought possible.  I thought it could definitely not get any worse than what I was already feeling.  And then I would spend night after night exhausted from crying, wondering if the agony of grieving would end.

I love that in working through the pain of the song, Sara sings about the hope of being able to ‘breathe again’.  Breathing is a beautiful, natural action.  One that requires your own strength and will to achieve.  In dire circumstances people can force you to breathe but to truly live you must be able to breathe on your own.   I think sometimes I take for granted my ability to do this involuntary movement.  I love that she admits that she needed her lover (he’s the air I would kill to breathe) but that one day she will be able to support herself, to live without him for their own good.

Over the past months in healing, I take her words as my own.  I admit to myself that he was the air in my lungs, the blood in my veins, filling every thought and emotion, saturating my dreams.  I willingly face the pain of being momentarily breathless, becoming deprived of the addicting nature of idealistic infatuation and love, in favour of the reality of being able to pump my own life through my body. To breathe without needing him.  To breathe as one with my Father, who kept me alive on nights where I had given up on myself.  And slowly but steadily I am letting go of what could only be the briefest of blissful dreams.

“Out of breath I’m left hoping someday I’ll breathe again..”