Stay With Me

I saw a meme yesterday with this quote: “It’s okay if the only thing you did today was breathe.” And I was instantly irritated. Last spring, I saw the quote on social media, and it had a video with it, featuring a woman who’s a bestselling author and motivational speaker. In the video, she talked about how terrible that quote was—how it gives you permission to require nothing of yourself. She gave an impassioned speech about the importance of getting up and fighting for your goals every day rather than settling for mediocrity. To her, mediocrity was telling yourself it was okay if all you did was breathe.

I watched that video on a day when I was recovering from pneumonia. I had spent the day and the week leading up to it focusing almost exclusively on breathing. I have asthma—breathing isn’t always an easy, don’t-have-to-think-about-it process.  So there are days when all I do is breathe. And being lectured for that wasn’t helpful. Those of us with chronic health conditions constantly get the message that we’re not trying hard enough. That if we just worked harder to find answers or forced ourselves to get out of bed, our lives would be transformed. Over and over again, we hear this, whether in actual words or in what we perceive. And the message changes from “I’m not doing enough” to “I’m not enough.”

When I was three years old, I started having attacks where I was unable to breathe. My parents were told it was allergies, mainly an allergy to my cat Misty. Misty was my dearest friend and had been my companion through so much sickness—it must have broken my parents’ hearts to take her away from me. And it didn’t help. At four, I was diagnosed with asthma, and I began to live a kind of split existence. During the day, I was happy reading and playing with my brother. And I had a whole world in my imagination that I often retreated to—a secret world of words where poems played and prose danced and I was the conductor of all of them.

During the day, my asthma was manageable with inhalers and breathing treatments. But when night began to fall, the happy little girl I was slipped away, and a terrified, lonely little girl took her place. I knew what was coming—my asthma always flared up at night. And often the treatments we had at home didn’t work. Panic would wash over me as my dad carried me from my bed to the car for yet another late-night ER visit. The urgency with which the doctors acted terrified me. My dad was often pushed out of the room, leaving me alone with doctors and needles and oxygen tents and tubes in my mouth and nose. I wanted Misty. I wanted my mom. But I had two sisters and a brother at home, and Mom had to stay with them.

When I was five, I was lying in bed after one of these late-night ER visits. The doctors had given me IV steroids and a shot of adrenaline. I looked down at my nightgown and noticed it fluttering up and down from my rapid heartbeat. I was so hyped up from the medicine that I felt like I could run for miles. But I was so completely exhausted that when I tried to call out for my mom and dad, I couldn’t make a sound. I felt tears roll into my ears as I lay on my back. Lying there alone, I wished that I’d never been born. I couldn’t physically say the words, but I mentally asked God why He had even bothered to make me if He was going to break me as soon as He did.

That was the night that I began to believe that I was broken and damaged beyond repair. I saw the difference between my sisters and brother and me. They were in perfect health. They ran and played and laughed and never once even wheezed. I had to be monitored constantly for the slightest sound in my lungs. My siblings never had to go to the doctor; I felt like the doctor’s office was my second home. My parents took me to one specialist after another. And though I was very young at these visits, I listened to and understood every word the doctors said. I listened to their dire warnings about how sudden and deadly asthma attacks could be. In the waiting rooms, I read every pamphlet on asthma that I could find. I saw the detailed diagrams of what happens to your lungs during an asthma attack. I read the statistics about death in children and adults. And I read one sentence that I have never forgotten: “It is not uncommon for the asthmatic to die in their sleep.” Hyperbolic and old-fashioned perhaps, but that sentence etched itself into my brain. I heard it constantly at night. When the steroids and adrenaline didn’t keep me awake, I tried desperately not to fall asleep. I thought that if I fell asleep, I would die.

As I grew older, I began to hear a constant whisper: “You’re broken. You’re too damaged to have friends. You’re not good enough to love.” And I believed it. All my life, all I’d known was the cycle of brokenness and fixing—of having symptoms and then trying to cure or mask them with drugs. If I wheezed, I was given an inhaler. Or two or three. If that didn’t work, I was given breathing treatments. I was on a steady regimen of heavy steroids—if I had a flare-up, I was given more. If the steroids failed, the dreaded adrenaline shots began. My asthma improved as I grew up, but I was still caught up in that cycle. If something inside of me felt broken, I wanted—I needed—to fix it immediately. Chronic pain? I pumped myself full of opioids until I couldn’t feel, think, or care anymore. Anxiety? I took downers by the handful. Difficulty breathing because of the downers? I amped myself back up with steroids. Desperate for sleep? I poured alcohol over all the other drugs in my system and waited for oblivion.

Again and again and again I repeated this pattern until the cycle became a full-blown disease of addiction. I was no longer a helpless child. I was an adult who had no idea how to cope with life. I went from wishing I’d never been born to thinking about ways to die. And I cut everyone out of my life except for my husband, Monty. I was sure that people would leave me the minute they found out how damaged and broken I was. I knew I couldn’t bear the pain of abandonment, so I pushed friends and family away before they could do it to me. And I held onto Monty with every bit of strength I had left. It didn’t matter how many times he told me that he wouldn’t leave me—I was too broken to believe him. I believed that I wasn’t good enough for him. That he deserved someone without scars. Without such open, wanting need. I asked him again and again why he didn’t leave at the same time I begged him to stay.

And he did stay. He stayed through the worst of my addiction. He stayed when I finally chose sobriety. And now, eight years later, he stays during the doctor visits and breathing treatments. He literally holds me up to help me breathe. And my family stayed. When I’m struggling to breathe, I text my mom just one word: “Pray.” No matter what time of day or night it is, she gets down on her knees and prays for me. She prays to the One who stayed with me even when I thought I didn’t want Him to—the One who I was so angry at for the mess He made in making me. He loved me back to life when I wanted to die. He flooded me with grace to cover the mistakes I made. He breathes for me. He gives me hope. Through it all, He was there. And He stayed.

Because He did—because Monty and my family did—I stayed, too. I stopped wanting to die and started learning how to live. And I’ve learned that I’m enough just as I am. That I have been broken, but I am not broken. That I don’t need a fix or to be fixed to live a full life. That therapy and writing and recovery and moments of beauty are powerful tools in the battles I still fight daily, both mentally and physically. Especially on the days when “all” I do is breathe.

To those of you who live in the shadow of constant illness and pain, who think no one can possibly understand how you feel, hear me when I say this: I understand. And you’re enough. You’re good enough, just as you are right this minute.

Even if “all” you did today was breathe.

Because you chose to stay one more day and hold on a little longer.

Because you’re tormented by mental or physical pain, but you continue to breathe and look up.

You are enough. Stay.