Trish’s friends were covered head-to-toe in denim, with buttons of my sister’s favorite rock bands all over their jean jackets: Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, the Cars, and Ozzy Osbourne. I thought they were badges of association with the Devil. There was a lot of hair, sprayed straight up and teased like giant cobwebs extending from their foreheads. Her boyfriends’ faces were covered in greasy bangs that hid their eyes. They all looked like they had been drenched in a dark rain.
On that particular night, something strange happened to my body. The more I ran around the house and played, the harder it became to breathe. It wasn’t like being out of breath, but felt more like there was no air at all. With my newfound control over flipping my body, I felt superior to sickness, and I became confused and irritated by what was happening. I played harder to break through this problem, but my breath wasn’t returning.
My heart raced in fear, and I was embarrassed to tell anyone what was happening. I followed the blue-painted cigarette smoke down the hall and went into my room to hide. I lay on top of my bed knowing that if I could just physically figure out breath the same way I understood movement, then I would be all right. I sat in the darkness and commanded my body to breathe and rip the oxygen from the air . . . except I couldn’t. I used all my chest muscles to pull the air inside me, but my body refused it in a giant choke. Again I tried, and physically imagined my lungs expanding, but they weren’t responding. A hot stream of salty tears burnt along my cheeks—suddenly I knew I was going to die. Yet I refused to accept that thought. I looked out the window through the thick, pale glass that separated me from the outside. Between the window and screen lay a dead fly nestled under the spark of the moon’s glow, lifeless, still, and decayed. I wondered if that was what we ended up looking like after we died.
My ghostly fingers pressed against the windowpane, tracing the shape of a birch tree bending in the wind. From where I lay, all that was on the other side of the glass suddenly felt forever unreachable. I didn’t know if I believed in a God at that moment, but I prayed to him, watching the tree sway and seeing a glimmer of my reflection in the glass. My reflection couldn’t feel a thing; it just watched as I gasped for air, sipping the tiny bits of oxygen that circled my body as I looked at the colored tulips around the tree.
In my childish thinking, I believed I could hide from what was happening to me. I went beneath the covers where I felt safe and could hide from that breath-stealing beast, but it had already found me, snarling in the shadows. We now shared the same space, and I accepted its agenda. For the first time in my life I felt mortality in the presence of a sinister and invisible force. It was conquering me, and I could do nothing about it.
I was defeated with each painful breath I tried to take. My small hands balled into fists as I physically fought to get the air inside me. Dread filled my mind, and the shadows in the room seemed to be silently waiting. I was now completely powerless, and it happened so fast. The air was no longer available for me to take. My heart raced faster and faster, like a drummer gone mad. I thought I was dying, and I was embarrassed that I no longer had the strength or ability to fight. Deep inside my skeleton, I imagined my air sacs relaxing and breathing rhythmically. But that meditation wasn’t working, and I was losing the battle.
The air that I could get into my lungs felt painful and sharp, like shards of glass cutting me open on the way down through my breathing tubes. The seconds between each breath were getting longer and longer, and I was fighting every step of the way. I don’t know if I made peace with death at that moment, but luckily my sister came in to check on me. She saw me in my bed choking, crying, and very sick. I don’t remember what happened next because I drifted off into an abyss of unconsciousness.
I woke up in the hospital on top of an uncomfortable, crib-like bed that was wrapped entirely in a plastic bubble. The bed and walls were covered with thick moisture. A machine pushed air and medicine into the space, and it felt soothing. Slowly my breath returned, and I knew the medicine-filled air was killing the beast that had taken residence in my lungs. I lay there, exhausted from my fight, but once again feeling immortal and strong. I was still sick, but the storm was over. I watched my mother on the other side of the tent looking in at me with concern. She looked beautiful through the plastic, like a goddess. Quietly, surrendering to the air that filled my lungs, I breathed in every ounce of medicine that blew into the space. The anxiety left my spirit and I knew that everything was going to be okay.
The diagnosis was pneumonia combined with asthma. The doctors said I would have asthma for the rest of my life. At the time, that diagnosis meant nothing to me except that I would have to take a bunch of inhalers, which I liked. I learned a valuable lesson that day—if there is something wrong with me, I can take a certain type of medication and quickly feel better.
THE HEART IS A MUSCULAR ORGAN RESPONSIBLE FOR PUMPING BLOOD THROUGH THE BLOOD VESSELS BY REPEATED, RHYTHMIC CONTRACTIONS AND IS FOUND IN ALL VERTEBRATES. IN THE EGYPTIAN Book of the Dead, THE HEART WAS WEIGHED IN A BALANCE AGAINST THE FEATHER OF MA′AT, A DEITY SYMBOLIZING TRUTH. THE HEAVINESS OF THE HEART PROVIDED THE MEASUREMENT OF SIN. IF THE HEART OUTWEIGHED THE FEATHER, THE POSSESSOR WOULD NOT HAVE A FAVORABLE AFTERLIFE.
The dark hallway opened to a giant indoor tennis court full of gymnastics equipment. The apparatuses looked hazardous, beaten, and weary, reminding me of old-fashioned torture devices used in wars hundreds of years ago. These structures stood like tombstones jutting out of an archaic graveyard, sanctified and solid. The equipment had absorbed the souls of all the athletes who had performed and trained on those devices—each spirit giving the gym more character and stability, transforming the space into its own thriving organism.
I walked into my very first gymnastics class knowing I wanted to be a champion. I heard an ethereal voice that whispered, “This is your fate.” The very thought of beginning my journey there made my heart race and my palms sweat, and created a hypnotic state of determination, desire, and hunger in my nine-year-old brain. My hunger was akin to that of a ravenous animal that had been starved for its entire life, and then freed from its cage to search for food. Only fear rivaled my enthusiasm, as I knew this was where I had to prove to a merciless God that I was worthy of the gift of movement.
I sat in the row of tiny blue plastic seats, anxiously watching the classes. I looked around the gymnasium at all the strange equipment, focusing on the high bar. I couldn’t believe how tall it was, and I shuddered thinking about gripping the chalk-covered steel bar. It looked down upon me and whispered the tales of past gymnasts’ abuse and violence. Their torment, blood, desperation, and drive still stained and smothered the bar. The two tall, red supporting posts formed an invisible gateway to a dimension of endless work, pain, and agony that I would need to endure. That gymnasium would become an orchestra that would flood my soul with music.
The class was trying “aerials,” no-handed cartwheels, coached by a man who intimidated me. He was in his twenties, muscular, serious, and strict. Our class was beginning and I waved to my mother, letting her know I was all right. I wore ridiculously oversized red shorts with my two skinny, chalk-white legs protruding from the folds, and walked over to join the other kids. I had a moment of uncertainty, and looked back at my mom. When our eyes met, she looked down at the book in her lap, secretly telling me, “You don’t need me now; you can do this.” There were only a couple of other kids my age in the class, and they weren’t very good at tumbling. We spent the entire hour rolling on the floor. It was definitely not my idea of a gymnastics class—more like a “Mommy and Me Gymnastics without My Mom” class. I knew I was going to come back, but still, I felt gypped.
I