He Is The Cure

I have become deeply suspicious of modern medicine. Not because I don’t believe in it. Modern medicine has done some incredible things, and I am grateful for all of them. It’s just that after months of careful observation, I’ve discovered that my boyfriend appears to cure an alarming number of conditions, and frankly nobody seems interested in studying this phenomenon.

Whenever my thoughts get too loud (and they do, with remarkable dedication), I stop being a functioning member of society. I become a woman trapped inside a haunted house of her own construction, where every hallway leads to another catastrophic conclusion, which, statistically speaking, would never happen.

The strange thing is that these episodes always convince me they’re permanent. That this is it. I’ve finally reached the end of my ability to cope, and from now on I’ll simply exist like this forever, pacing around my room and staring dramatically at the walls.

And then I see him. Before we can have any profound conversation or he can give his miraculous insight, he stands there with open arms, and somehow that alone is enough to undo hours of damage.

I don’t know how to explain what happens next without sounding a little ridiculous.

The moment I fold myself into him, the world begins retreating. The noise loses its grip on me. The urgency evaporates. Everything that felt enormous only moments ago begins to shrink back to its actual size. I can breathe again, and for a while that feels like the greatest luxury a person can have.

My favourite place in the world is with my head resting against his chest.

I become aware of his heartbeat. Then his breathing. Then my own. And somewhere in the space between one inhale and the next, a border starts dissolving. I stop being entirely myself, and he stops being entirely himself, and suddenly there’s just this shared rhythm carrying us both forward. His chest rises. Mine follows. The distinction of where he begins and where I end grows blurrier and blurrier until trying to separate us feels like trying to identify where a river becomes the sea.

A while ago, I would’ve told you that every person belongs entirely to themselves, with clearly defined borders. Proper sovereignty and all that.

I don’t think that anymore.

There are moments when the people we love become woven so deeply into the fabric of our lives that they begin to exist inside us too. And mostly, not as an extension of ourselves, but as a place we can return to.

Anyway.

My boyfriend insists that deep breathing exercises are good for anxiety.
Which is true, technically.
I just happen to do mine through him.