#also glad to hear ur still on an electra heart kick

[clairenatural]

As someone who‘s body occasionally does stupid shit - once, when I was doing nothing in particular, I forgot how to breathe. Clearly it didn’t last, as I‘m still kicking, but it was terrifying, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

It feels like when you forget how to swallow (familiar), but also like you‘ve forgotten how to be human - a very real sense of existence being only the body you wear - and then there‘s the terror of “I’m not breathing” and what the fuck who tf just forgets how to breathe.

After freaking out and getting quite short of breath, I had to manually breathe for a bit before my body did the “oh yeah, that’s how it works” thing - kinda like after you get a cast taken off a joint and you have to move it manually for a bit before it remembers to move reflexively.

It’s been a decade or so since that happened, and it’s distant enough that it’s just one of those strange things that happened to me. Anyway, your story was most excellent in capturing that sort of feeling. Assuming you didn’t have a reference for that, you did very well putting yourself in those shoes long enough to accurately express how it feels. You have a gift with words.

Also I just realised I’m assuming other people forget how to swallow from time to time. I think that’s a thing? lol what if it isn’t and my body is stupider than I thought 😭

On a less existential note, Living Dead (from Electra Heart. I have interrupted my listening to this album with only an interlude of Snow Patrol’s Wildness) is playing in my ears as I’m typing, so there’s that

Aw thank u :') that sounds terrifying tbh. I've never just stopped breathing in an otherwise fine moment but I was approaching that fic from an anxiety angle–i realize I focused a lot more on the physical sensation that what's goin on inside his head but that's kinda how I experience/conceptualize my own anxiety/panic attacks? Honestly ofc there's more going on but the scariest part for me is when I'm like "ok time to breathe correctly!" and my lungs say "no ❤️" so that's what I went with. I'm glad I managed to accurately portray it!! :')

also forgetting how to swallow isn't just you, I'm pretty sure it's happened to me before 😭 bodies are so weird sometimes