Stolen Air

I hate summer. I’ve hated summer for a long time. I don’t know if there was ever a time I really liked summer.

I think when I was little I liked the idea of summer. I liked the idea of having three months out of school to play with my friends.

But I never actually liked the season.

I can’t breathe in summer time.

The hot, humid summer air in Missouri has always filled my lungs in a way that I felt like I was gasping for air.

Hot, sticky, humid air.

Air that stayed around sticking and clinging to the inside of my lungs until I could get a gasp of refreshing, crisp, cool air.

I think that’s why I liked Autumn so much.

A breath of fresh air after feeling like I had been holding my breath for months.

Autumn always changed my whole mood. I feel like I can always tell the second Autumn arrives.

The air gets crisper and when I’m driving home from work and the smell of pine trees seeps into my car through the vents.

I could always smell them as soon as I passed the lake.

I always take the deepest breaths trying to breathe in every bit of that smell.

Autumn has always been my favorite season. I can breathe again.

That’s why it hurt so badly when he stole the crisp, fresh air out of my lungs. A punch to the gut.

The air of his carelessness and selfishness filling my lungs was hot and sticky air. Inflating me like a balloon. Choking me into silence.

I couldn’t breathe. For months I could not breathe.

Where were the pine trees?

He was gone, so why was the hot, sticky, humid air from all the negative emotions he put on me still there?

It took months and months for me to realize I had been holding my breath.

Never once looking to myself to replace what he had stolen.

Instead waiting for him to bring back the fresh air he had taken -stealing doesn’t work like that.

It was as if I had forgotten there was other crisp, cool air all around me, and I just had to inhale.

Too fixated on the air he stole to realize that I could replace my own air.

I could fill my own lungs back up.

He can never steal my air again.

In fact, no one can steal my air again. I’ll fill myself back up.