Just breathe.

Have you ever had one of those days where it is all you can do to just breathe? Memories are like a lens--they can be help you see things more clearly, to revel, to enjoy--but once shattered, damaged, distorted they can never really be put back together. Everything becomes blurred and broken.

There is no formula to what causes some days to be more difficult than others, no equation by which production of tears can be calculated or manipulated. Some days are just more difficult. This morning I woke up feeling as though I were buried beneath layers and layers of thick wool military blankets. Scratchy and irritating to the touch, an old musty smell attached that made it metaphorically more difficult to breathe--like they'd been stored in the attic, or the basement of the houseboat and hadn't gotten sufficient are circulation. I was freezing--and they were attempting to keep me warm (my house was 78 degrees). Stifling, Suffocating sadness.