Don’t forget to Breathe

I’ve started a new job and although I am pleasantly surprised by how much I needed the routine having a job entails, I also now realize the importance of my support structures in keeping my mental health in check. These include my therapy sessions, my yoga and meditation and my journaling. Last week was a hard week because I didn’t make sure to commit to the things, I know, maintain distance between myself and my incessant over-thinking, which always leads me to want to drink.

The traffic was an absolute abomination and I found myself spending two hours a day getting to and from work. It was causing me to not have time to attend morning yoga classes or evening ones, so as each day passed, I became a little further removed from the content authentic space my structures put me in. And now I understand what people mean by ‘prioritizing’ oneself. It means prioritizing your own activities and not letting anything distract you from the things that breathe life into you. Last week I got distracted, and shortly after, overwhelmed – resulting in my frantic searching of the AA website to try and lock a meeting down so I wouldn’t ruin my seven months of no drinking.

I find myself spiral into this state of panic when I realize that there is an urge to drink and that I can’t cater that urge. I think to myself, “what now? what am I going to do to get through this feeling?”. But that’s the thing about feelings; they too pass eventually, even if that means white-knuckling sobriety for a while. So I acknowledge the feeling, hoping that in doing so it would loosen its grip around my chest, I focus on my life source: my breath. And it reminds me that no matter what is going on externally, as long as the breath moves in and out, I am alive.

And before you know it, you find such peace and solace in that inward and outward breath. You begin to realize that peace exists within you, by default. You begin to feel invincible because as long as you have your breath, you are unstoppable.

In that moment of having your eyes closed and tuning into your inhalations and exhalations, you put distance between yourself and your thoughts and life becomes manageable. And soon, when your eyes open once again, you feel free to move forward and live. If we think about it, our breath is our companion, its consistent and its rolling, in and out, in and out… always there until its not, and as we cease to exist with its inexistence, we are breath and breath is us.