The Practical Free Spirit

Lately I’ve been struggling to breathe.

This time I mean it literally. My asthma, dormant for this many years, has reared its ugly head in the past week. I have been coughing and coughing and losing my voice and trying to ignore the tight, uncomfortable feeling in my chest that means my bronchial tubes are not performing as they ought. Coughing wakes me up in the middle of the night, and it makes it difficult to fall asleep.

Last week I woke up in the middle of the night, in the middle of a dream, because I could not breathe. And for a few seconds there, I continued to be unable to breathe. I didn’t have time to wonder if this was what death felt like because I won my struggle and I got some oxygen down into my lungs.

It took me a while to figure out what was happening because it’s been so long since my asthma has been anything but the reason I always carry a plastic bag for liquids onto planes with me, so I can have medication in case of an emergency that has never happened. But now I am medicating appropriately, and hopefully my lungs will respond, and hopefully I won’t wake up again in the night unable to breathe.

Why the sudden asthma? It could be seasonal allergies. It could be stress. But upon reflection, I suspect it might be the large amounts of dust I’ve been stirring up during the last five weeks of my cleaning spree. I am incredibly allergic to dust. I forget this is true because I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid dust. I tend to let it accumulate on surfaces (I know, but really, don’t tell me you’re surprised I’m a terrible housekeeper) because if I disturb it, I feel sick. I do anything related to dust, I feel sick. And suddenly there’s been this huge influx of dust in my life, so really, the fact that I feel sick right now makes complete sense.

Nala is very sympathetic.

What does this mean for my cleaning project? Well…. I can always get one of those dust masks, although I hate them because I never feel like I can breathe properly while wearing one. But also, I’ve made very good progress on my project. According to Marie Kondo, I only have two categories left: miscellany and mementos. Miscellany is my board game collection, all the assorted cables and wires that live in my living room, my junk drawer that has turned into more of a junk console, and assorted other storage spaces that have accumulated stuff (most scarily, the spare room closet, although I already tackled some of that on the weekend, along with my bathroom).

In other words, a lot of the work left to be done is simply getting stuff out of my house, whether that be by throwing it into the dumpster, bringing it to Goodwill, or finding someone I know who wants it. And then some of the work is convincing myself I can do without various mementos, most (but not all) of which I’m already perfectly well aware.

So I will do what I can, and I will monitor my breathing. I might not be as thorough as I’d otherwise be, but unlike Marie Kondo, my goal is not perfection. It is simply to do better than previously, and that I have already accomplished.