How Can You Provide Me Air And Suffocate Me At The Same Time?

If air — the very essence of life — were personified, I believe it would be you.

You are the air I breathe — essential, life-sustaining, and irreplaceable. Loving you is as natural as breathing, a rhythm my body follows without thought or hesitation. You fill my lungs with life, remind me to keep going, and anchor me in moments when I forget how to simply exist.

With you, breathing feels effortless. You’re the breeze on a hot summer day, cooling my skin and soothing my spirit. You’re the soft wind at the beach, carrying freedom in its embrace, or the gentle air tapping on my window, waiting to be welcomed in. At times, you even take my breath away entirely, leaving me awestruck and speechless.

But how can something so vital, so comforting, also suffocate me? How can the very thing that sustains me become the force that leaves me gasping for relief? You are the air that fills my lungs, yet sometimes it feels like there’s too much — or not enough.

You are the air so thick with tension that it feels heavy in my chest, like trying to breathe through smoke. You are the chill of the night, so sharp and biting it leaves me trembling, gasping for warmth that never comes.

You overwhelm me in ways I can’t control, like wind whipping through a storm, spinning me off balance, pulling my umbrella in every direction at once. At times, your presence feels like the air in a room that’s too small, closing in on me, and pressing against my ribs until I’m left aching for space. You are the force that leaves me unsettled between the comfort of your love and the fear of losing myself in it.

You remind me how fragile life is, how it can feel like breathing through a straw when emotions run too deep or the weight of everything becomes too much. And yet, even in this discomfort, I can’t deny your importance. Even when you suffocate me, you are proof that I’m alive — that my heart is beating, my lungs are working, and my soul is feeling everything it was meant to.

But despite all that, I know I can’t continue living this way. So, I choose to breathe without you — the one who suffocated me I choose to find air that nourishes me, to seek out the space where I can breathe freely again. For all the lessons you’ve taught me, I can’t keep living in a world where every breath is a fight. I need to reclaim the air that is mine — one that doesn’t choke, one that lets me feel light, one that doesn’t make my chest ache with the weight of your presence. The air that lifts me instead of weighing me down.

I’m going to choose to breathe without you because I owe it to myself to find peace and to remember that life can be gentle, too. And though I’ll never forget the lessons you’ve taught me — the resilience you’ve helped me build — I now know that I deserve to breathe freely, without the burden of suffocation.