The west coast is on fire. Fortunately, none of those fires are very close to Seattle. Yet. But all that west coast smoke got blown into the Pacific Ocean, hit an induction current, and headed right to Puget Sound like a freight train from hell. We now have some of the worst air quality on the planet. Poor Oregon has it even worse. I’m struggling to breathe.
The day before yesterday, when I got home from work, I was coughing, my heart was pounding, and I had a headache. Air matters. I kept having to fight down a panic attack when I felt as though I wasn’t getting enough.
My inner child was freaking out. “You’re gonna DIE!!!” “Help me!” I was on the verge of tears for most of the day. This feels like the end of the world.
Yesterday I brought a respirator to work. A respirator. And we thought masks were bad. I would never have predicted that I’d be relying on a respirator. This is not the world I had planned to live in. The smoke has blocked out the sun. It’s a perpetual twilight.
But with time to think, I was able to compare my situation to others. Not being able to breathe is terrifying. I thought of my late boyfriend, Chuck, who had to fight for every breath he took. When he was having a really bad asthma attack, he’d want me to put my hand on his heart and talk calmly to him, so he wouldn’t freak out. “You’re breathing. You’re breathing…” I can still hear myself saying it. I learned to say it even before I was fully awake. Now I get it. I get it, and I’m heartbroken at the thought of it.
I also feel even worse about George Floyd. Lying there in the street, being choked to death by a cop. He was looking at the crowd, who were desperately trying to talk the cop out of this, but the crowd, for good reason, was too afraid to physically intervene. How frightened and alone he must have felt as he died.
I feel for those in industrialized China who have lived with this air quality every single day for years. It’s a travesty.
I’m outraged for those prisoners in Guantanamo. Many are still there, and some have been waterboarded more than 80 times. What animals are we to do that? It has long been proven that torturing doesn’t yield valuable information.
I weep for all the people who have died of COVID-19, each one struggling for breath as they went. And they had no loved ones by their side to put their hands on their hearts and talk calmly to them. So much of this has been unnecessary.
Winter is coming and the fires will die down, but we’ll still have to deal with this pandemic. In the best of times, I struggle with depression during these Pacific Northwest winters. The isolation. Not seeing the sun for weeks on end. The raw, wet, unrelenting rain. Now add a heaping helping of COVID-19 on top of that, and I fail to see how any of us will make it to spring with our sanity intact.
Please, God, do not visit an earthquake upon us right now. I can’t take another thing. Stop 2020. I want to get off.
Stay safe everyone. Wear your masks. Wash your hands. Vote.
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The View from a Drawbridge 
(Stop 2020. I want to get off.) I keep hearing different versions of that refrain but can’t believe leaving 2020 will magically end this roller-coaster ride. I started wearing a bracelet that says, just breathe, back in 2016 to help me deal with the constant chaos that that year began. Then I found myself holding my breath from shock or anger, but now every precious breath I try to take is polluting my lungs. I’m west of a fire that’s been darkening our skies since 9/5 and, combined with a heat wave, it’s nearly finished me off. Just doing everything I can to avoid the E.R. and covid. Let’s hope this election goes in favor of humanity so we can all, eventually, breathe a bit easier.
Fingers crossed, Lyn, and please stay safe.