Shortness of Breath

When I hold my breath, time stops. 

I don’t mean metaphorically like I’m waiting for a girl to respond to a marriage proposal. Or a flying piece of shrapnel to avoid my foxhole buddy. And certainly not in that overused trope of a phrase wherein I might “let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.” No, sir, I am hyper-conscious of every breath I might hold, whether triggered intentionally or not, because time does, in fact, stand still. For as long as I’m not inhaling or exhaling, at least. And only as long as I can hold it.

Did you know the average human can hold their breath for only about 30 to 90 seconds? That’s quite a range, and with only 90 seconds at the top end it’s not a lot. But enough.

Because of my unique ability, I’ve been training to calm my heart and lower my oxygen consumption and have thereby pushed my limit to almost two and one-half minutes, which is quite astounding. Navy SEALS can do three minutes. The world record is over twenty-four. That man wasn’t doing anything during his feat, immobile in a zen-like trance trying not to let the buildup of carbon dioxide in his bloodstream kill him via hypercapnia. I could do a lot with frozen time in twenty-four minutes, but what would be the point if I had to remain completely stationary? 

Two minutes is a long time when time has dissolved as a constraint, but even with two minutes I’m limited. So, why not just string together several two-minute chunks, you may ask? I have! But I need to give myself time to recover in between. I gotta catch my breath. And it’s especially awkward if there are people around because to them, I’m just standing there one second and then suddenly I’m gasping for air like I’m suffocating. 

It’s alarming. I’ve had people call 911 and I have to explain politely that thank you but no thank you. After a couple of minutes of recovery, I can just hold my breath again and disappear, leaving them to wonder what happened.

Fortunately, my exploits haven’t ended up in any news outlets. Yet. I’m getting to the point where I care less and less about startling people or making them uncomfortable, so showing up in the conspiracy threads on social media seems only a matter of time.

Mostly I don’t care because I’m realizing they’re all stuck -- heck, I am too -- in this linear progression of time always marching forward. But it doesn’t matter, in a good way. Once I recognized that time was literally something that could be controlled, it broke something in me like an eggshell I could crawl out of, born anew. Something that had constrained me before. Something that probably still has you locked up in it.

With my unexplainable power, I’ve tasted freedom from that crushing push of time, that anxiety and angst and anticipation. The need to go, go, go. I can stop. Truly stop. And when I do, everyone stops with me. It’s miraculous. Even raindrops suspend in midair. Hummingbirds become a still life, freed from their frenzied flapping. The laughter of a child stretches like taffy; the moment a sailor kisses his girl lasts for a couple of minutes longer. I have to wonder if that laugh or that kiss is somehow sweeter because of what I’ve given them. Not the gift of more time, but a few minutes completely outside of it.

Only a temporary stay, then life comes whooshing back into full force. Sound waves return, the buzz of activity, the barely controlled chaos and pandemonium of people jostling through their lives, of our planet spinning around the sun, hurtling around our galaxy, flying out in the endless void of the universe.

Inhale. Hold. I can stop it all. Blink. Blink. Exhale. Whoosh.

I can’t meditate and focus on my breath while the world is locked in stasis. I can move, I can hide, I can dance or play the trickster. But as soon as I exhale, the inevitable perpetual motion machine continues. 

Now that you understand my power, maybe you’ll see the gravity of my decision when we met. When I saw you for the first time, I instinctively stopped breathing. 

I was thunderstruck. 

I stared. 

You’d glanced at me right before time stopped and so now you stared back. I wished I could hold my breath for longer than two measly minutes, but I didn’t want to suddenly start gasping, so I let it out only after about fifteen seconds. But that was long enough to memorize your hazel eyes, your high cheekbones, the smile mid-laugh that made me happy to be in the world. I had to know your name, your phone number, your favorite song, what you liked to read, and how many times you’d ever said “I love you.”

And so I breathed normally. I walked over to you. You hadn’t looked away. It was like we already knew each other and were getting reacquainted after years apart. Time twisted and I felt like a teenager again, smitten irrationally, inconceivably.

I am horrible at remembering names, but with yours I knew I would never forget. You told me I had something in my beard and when I wiped at it, a tiny blob of strawberry jam from my toast that morning smeared across my finger. 

This woman, you, brand new to me, had the calm sense of self to tell me about my errant blemish. And I loved you for it. No one else that morning in the train station had mentioned it. Or seen it. But you’d seen me. And commented. And still, you didn’t look away.

After I groomed, you said: “There. Much more handsome.” And that smile again. That same smile that Cleopatra must have wielded to start the War of Actium.

I inhaled and held that precious, precious breath. Time stopped. I considered my next move. Careful, it had to be perfect.

I exhaled. Time flowed again.

But then, a strange thing occurred. I didn’t inhale and hold again, as I might usually do. I had no desire to ever stop time again. I wanted to live and learn and love with you until our last breaths.