Song: “Breathe” by
Murdoch, Alexi from Time Without
Consequence
“Then breathe. This
is important, make sure you breathe at this point. You may breathe before or
after, that’s fine. But at this point, specifically, you must breathe.”
This is how the instructions concluded. Cole and Evelyn held
them, his left hand gripping the left side of the paper, her right pointer
finger and thumb gingerly clasping the right side. They read them to themselves
while seated next to one another but upon reaching the end both glanced at one
another and briefly squinted at one another. Sure, the mutual confused scowl
seemed to say, breathing is important. Essential, come to it. But at that
moment especially? What was the deal there? And what would happen if you didn’t?
What possible consequences could await such a contrary choice?
Evelyn was naturally intrigued by this, unsurprisingly. She
was consistently absorbed by the question of “what if’s” when it came to not following
the rules. What if you did just steal that candy bar? What if you did drink the
milk after its expiration date? What if you just threw out the Ikea pictographs
and just put the damn desk together by intuition?
She’d ponder these scenarios, taking them out to the Nth
degree, to the logical and illogical extremes, trying to find every possible
path. Caught stealing or not? Milk still good or has it turned? Turns out you
have a good sense of how to put together a puzzle desk or you are as clueless
as Ikea imagines you to be?
For her, it was like Choose Your Own Adventures writ large.
Real life as a children’s book series. Though she rarely, if ever, would
violate the rules, the expectations, the laws, she enjoyed the flights of
fancy. They were a sort of creative outlet for a woman who sat at a desk
crunching numbers all day.
For Cole, however, contemplation of violating norms was an exercise
in terror. As a child, he couldn’t seem to get anything right. At least, that’s
how he remembered his childhood. Thus, he had developed an obsession with
sticking to the rules. For him, rules were a tether to reality and a ladder to
happiness. If he could just follow the rules, he could find and hold on to
happiness. If he followed the rules, surely the rest of his life would make
sense.
He was less than successful, often dragged off the path by
impulse and distraction. Chaos ensued. He survived and things were quickly set
back in place, but for however long the chaos lasted, Cole was a quivering mess
of jangled nerves and ceaseless self blame.
She loved him for his impulsiveness and embraced the art of
vicarious living through his numerous mistakes.
He loved her for her stability and saw her as the woman who
could hold him on the island of health choices.
They were both using each other for what each secretly viewed
as their shortcomings and, in this way, they were the perfect couple. Healthy
because of just how nakedly unhealthy they allowed themselves to be with each other.
And so they re-read the instructions once more and fell into
the black hole “Then breathe” was.
She glanced at him, he glanced at her.
“Please god, don’t let me screw up.”
“Ooo, ignored that last step! It’ll be fun.”
The words echoed in their heads but they remained silent.
Then, after a moment, Evelyn smiled sweetly and grabbed his
free hand in hers.
“Ready?” she whispered.
He nodded.
And so they began. And it went almost exactly as you’d
expect.
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