The Rules of breathing
The tears came. I remember the feeling of them, hot and unstoppable, tracing paths down my cheeks through the dust that seemed to cling to everything in that small, airless room. It held a scent I still sometimes catch in the quiet moments-stale, sour, the smell of resentment made somehow physical. My eyes burned, and stinging, trying to hold back the storm that raged inside, but the dam had already crumbled. He sat there, just a few feet away on the edge of the bed, his back to me, those big, black headphones clamped over his ears like he`d sealed himself away, a wall of plastic and manufactured sound. He was ignoring me. Blissfully, infuriatingly oblivious to the wreckage of the last few minutes, to the tremors still shaking my hands.
Disgust. It was a bitter taste in my mouth, thick and metallic, sharp as bile. It had replaced the love I used to feel when I looked at him so completely and utterly inlove, I couldn’t even remember what that love felt like anymore. Just this residue of revulsion. But it wasn’t just disgust; it was an exhaustion so profound it felt like a physical ailment. I was tired. So profoundly tired of being treated like trash, like something disposable. He had told me a thousand times, maybe more, that I should just leave if I didn't want to follow his rules. His rules. They weren’t written down, but they were the air I had to breathe, the invisible bars of my cage. Don't question his authority. It meant swallowing my questions, my doubts, silencing the voice inside me that screamed how wrong everything was. Have sex with him when he wants to. My body wasn’t my own anymore; it was his to take, a resource he was entitled to, regardless of how I felt, how much I hurt. Open the door for him in the wee hours. Welcoming him in, absorbing his drunken energy, erasing my right to peace, to sleep, to a predictable reality. Pick up after him, soak up the stench. Literally cleaning up his messes, physical and otherwise, absorbing the evidence of his disregard for me, for our shared space. Don't wake him up when he's asleep, even when there's no food. My needs, our daughter’s needs, always secondary, always less important than his comfort, his rest, his absolute, petty control.
But something had snapped that day. The rules had become a physical weight, pressing down until I couldn't draw a full breath. The breaking point lay in the corner, amidst the chaos he’d made looking for them – for the packets I’d found and, in a moment of desperate, reckless defiance, flushed away. His drugs. His escape. The key to his control, guarded more fiercely than me, or our future.
Fuck his rules. The thought was a flash of pure, hot rebellion, foreign and exhilarating for a fraction of a second. I darted towards him, propelled by a sudden, desperate need for him to see me, to hear me, to shatter the silent wall of those headphones. My pregnant belly, huge and awkward, a heavy testament to the life we’d made, the future he seemed intent on destroying, was a vulnerability in my sudden, clumsy charge. He reacted instantly. Too fast. A flicker of movement, a violent jerk away, and the headphones, the target of my reach, were caught between us, pulled taut.
Snap.
The small sound was sharp, disproportionately loud. Oh no, the automatic thought, the ingrained habit of apologizing, rose to my lips before I could stop it. I hadn't meant to break them, only to get his attention, to make him listen to me, just for once.
His head whipped around. His eyes, meeting mine, weren’t just angry. They were cold. Empty. Devoid of any recognition, any connection to the person I was, the mother of his child. The transformation from oblivious to enraged was instantaneous, chillingly familiar. The storm broke, unleashed, but it wasn’t just random anger; it was targeted, precise, designed to cut to the bone.
"What have you done?!" His yell ripped through the room, raw and ugly. "Do you know how much I worked and saved just so I could buy them?!" His voice was a weapon he wielded with practiced cruelty, finding the weakest points. "Not that you can relate, because you have never worked a single day in your life... Hell, you don't even have a degree! You are so stupid! Get out of my house! You are the devil himself! Demons live inside you! Get out of my house right away!"
The words hit me not as new wounds, but as reinforcements. Nails hammered into the framework of worthlessness he’d built around me, deep within me. Crocodile tears. His accusation, dismissing my very real pain, was a final, cruel twist. "Don't even cry those crocodile tears, you are making noise for my neighbors! You need to leave my house... you evil bitch!"
I stood there, tears still streaming, but the raw hurt was quickly hardening, dulling into the familiar ache of acceptance. I’m used to it all now. The terrifying truth of that statement settled deep within my bones. This was the price. The price for daring to disrupt his control, for attempting to fight back, however feebly. I shouldn't have done that. Why did I think it was okay to do that? The self-blame, a constant, insidious whisper, rose to condemn me.
Then his words twisted, finding the most vulnerable spot, the new life growing beneath my skin. "Hope that evil doesn't spread to my baby, that's even if she's mine... God knows who else you were sleeping with..."
That struck. Not with the familiar dull ache, but a sharp, cold pain that pierced through the numbness, a violation of the one pure thing left. Questioning her. Casting doubt on our daughter, on the truth of her life. In that instant, amidst the ugliness, a silent prayer formed, rising instinctively from a place deeper than despair, deeper than his cruelty. Please, God. Save my baby from this. Don't let her feel any of these negative feelings and hurt I'm going through. A desperate plea for a shield, for protection from the very air of that room, from the poison of her father's words, from the legacy of his darkness.
He kept yelling, but his specific words blurred, becoming part of the relentless, irritating noise that had filled my life, a screeching sound that drowned out everything else, even my own thoughts. The room around us was a disaster, clothes everywhere, furniture askew, a physical manifestation of his inner chaos and the destructive storm he had unleashed. This was the aftermath of his search for his drugs, the physical scar left by his rage.
I no longer saw the room clearly, no longer truly heard his shouts. I was adrift in that familiar, numb sea, the only anchor the silent prayer for the tiny life within me, a fragile flicker of light in the overwhelming dark. This was the reality I had chosen, created by a desperation for love that had led me here, to this room, to this moment. And in that moment, standing amidst the wreckage, enduring the onslaught, I felt the profound, terrifying certainty that I was, indeed, completely, utterly lost.
The feeling was absolute, a cold, heavy stone sinking in her gut amidst the chaotic wreckage of the memory. She stood amidst the strewn clothes, the echoes of his venomous words still ringing in the dust-filled air of that room, the ghost of her pregnant belly a phantom weight. Lost.
Then, a sound cut through the noise of the past. A voice. Not the harsh, cutting yell she had just been trapped with, but something measured, quiet, yet holding an undeniable gravity that reached across the space between them.
"Where would you like to begin today?"
The question settled in the air, heavy and still, pulling her back. Back from the memory, from the room of rules and wreckage, into this other room. The therapist's office. Wednesday afternoon. The weight in her gut was still there, but it was the weight of this moment now, the immense task of trying to answer, of trying to translate the untranslatable.
She sat in the armchair, feeling the solid ground beneath her, a small, conscious anchoring against the lingering disorientation. Her eyes, she knew, were still red, the heat of recent, remembered tears warm against her cheeks. She looked across at him, the therapist, booked for her by her mother. His face was calm, composed, a quiet presence that was both steadying and, in that moment, slightly intimidating in its expectation. He wasn't just a man; he was the keeper of questions, the gatekeeper to a process she wasn't sure she had the strength to begin. His office was a sanctuary of sorts, built of quiet woods and hushed tones, designed for containment, for the careful unpacking of pain. Books lined the walls behind him, silent witnesses, their spines a rigid line of collected human experience she felt utterly disconnected from, a testament to lives lived and understood in ways that felt alien to her own chaotic journey.
Outside, the sounds of Mutare provided a steady counterpoint to the room's internal quiet. A distant car horn, the murmur of voices from the street below, the rustle of leaves in the afternoon breeze. Life continuing, indifferent and relentless. The sunlight, thick and golden through the window, illuminated dust motes dancing in the space between her and the therapist, a silent, beautiful movement in a world that felt, to her, frozen in despair. The air itself felt heavy, humid, pressing down, much like the past still pressed upon her.
"Where would you like to begin today?" The question hung there, waiting. After the journey she had just taken in her mind, back into the heart of the wound, where could she begin? The answer felt impossibly vast, encompassing the dust of that memory, the weight of her present, the uncertain future stretching before her. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The memory, still vibrating beneath the surface of her consciousness, seemed to have stolen her voice. She was here, in the room, in the present, but the echoes of the past, the rules of breathing he had imposed, still held her captive.
Where indeed? The question hung in the air between them, a question of such immense scope it felt absurd, like asking a drowning person where they'd like to start swimming to shore when the shore was invisible and their limbs were lead. Where did the story of a life begin to unravel? Was it in the decision to leave college, a path abandoned, a potential future foreclosed? That felt like a beginning, a turning away. Or did it begin with the sudden, overwhelming reality of pregnancy, a seismic shift that had redefined her existence in an instant? That too, felt like a point of no return. And then him. The father. The 'baby daddy'. The casualness of the phrase was a shield, thin and easily shattered, against the truth of the devastation he had wrought, the slow, insidious erosion of trust, the carefully constructed edifice of himself that had crumbled into emotional abuse, leaving her with foundations of sand and a deep, aching trauma that still resonated in the marrow of her bones.
Now, she lived alone with their daughter. The words were simple, the reality a labyrinth of exhaustion and isolation. Her mother paid the rent. A fact she stated flatly, devoid of the shame that clung to it, the feeling of perpetual childhood, of being unable to stand on her own two feet. No job. No degree. Just the O-levels, relics of a time when a future had seemed possible, tangible.
This was the surface, the chronology of external events. But the truth was buried deeper, a subterranean river of feeling that threatened to flood her at any moment. It was the worthlessness that curled in her gut, a cold knot that tightened with every reminder of her perceived failures. It was the despair that coated everything, like fine dust settling on furniture, dulling the colors, muting the light. It was the pervasive sense of being lost, standing at a crossroads with no signposts, no map, and a heavy burden she couldn't put down. The air felt thinner than it should, difficult to draw into her lungs. A quiet desperation clawed at her throat. Where, she wondered, did the story end? For in that moment, a beginning seemed impossible, and an ending felt like the only logical conclusion to a narrative that was already too heavy to carry. She looked at the silent books, the indifferent sunlight, the calm face of the therapist, and felt the edges of her carefully constructed composure begin to fray. The question hung unanswered in the air. Where to begin? Perhaps, she thought, the beginning was always in the place that felt most like an end.
