Love / Sick / Blues

I love you. 

You've been a part of my life since I was five years old. 

You made everything OK.  From the playground to the office and all the points of my life in between.  When I was nervous, when I was tired, when I was cold, you were there for me.  My crutch.  With you at my side I was invincible.  Without you I was nothing.

I used to wake up needing you.  I'd get nervous if you weren't around.  There were times I couldn't do anything without you, couldn't leave the house.  I BUILT MY LIFE around you.  Just to be near you, to feel you next to me.  In idle moments I would caress you, not realising I was doing it.  And the more I had you, the more I needed you. 

You RULED MY FUCKING WORLD and I let you. 

I was addicted to you.  The delicious taste of you - like vodka and tonic.  Sometimes you set me free - you were what made my life bearable, even possible.  Other times you were the bars of my prison.  You DICTATED my life.  Made me hate you.  Made me cry. 

Other people never understood our relationship.  I have tried, failed, given up trying to explain.  No-one knows you like I do.  I could write books about you.  My autobiography would be a poem to you.  I needed you, I wanted you, I ate, slept and breathed you. 

But these last two or three years, things have changed between us.

I thought you always had my best interests in mind.  But as I've grown older I've realised I was wrong.  You're bad for me.  You stress my heart.  Make me anxious.  Keep me awake.  And the more I loved you, the worse you treated me.

It's not that I've grown out of you.  Nowhere near that simple.  It's more that I've been weaning myself off you.  Forcing myself to go longer and longer without you.  Denying myself those sweet doses of you, a little at a time.

You are still a part of my life.  Likely you always will be.   Sometimes I still reach for you in the night, just to know you are there.  But you don't mean as much to me any more.  There are whole days when I barely think of you.  Weeks, maybe.

You are... Ventolin.  100 micrograms of salbutamol sulphate per actuation.

I used to get through a blue inhaler every two weeks.  Fellow asthmatics will confirm - for someone ostensibly living a normal life, this is an ABSOLUTE SHITLOAD.  I was on a downward spiral.  Three years ago I realised that asthma wasn't something I could just let tick along, self-medicating whenever I felt ill.  Asthma is a complex, dangerous disease that needs to be actively and deliberately managed.

I went to the doctor today to get my repeat prescription - one blue inhaler, one brown.  The computer showed it was NINE MONTHS since my last. 

Your spell is broken.  I don't need you like I once did. 

But just now, just tonight, I need you again.

Comments

[Paige]

O-night...as a fellow asthmatic, I must say that is indeed a shitload.

I returned to the inhaler only recently. After a few years of not having these fits, I found myself in a far-too-hot coffee shop with my daughter, wheezing until I was almost blue in the face. It came out of nowhere and it freaked me to no end.

[clarissa]

I was always jealous that my asthmatic brother got one of those mysterious tubes on which to suck. I wanted one. Of course: my brother was older. I wanted whatever he had. even asthma.

[clarissa]

I was always jealous that my asthmatic brother got one of those mysterious tubes on which to suck. I wanted one. Of course: my brother was older. I wanted whatever he had. even asthma.

[Jack]

If I had a tenth of the humanity people say I should my first reaction to this would not have been remembered annoyance at never being able to quite convincingly enough pull off the wheeze that would convince the PE teacher to let me stay indoors and read instead. There is, after all, only so many weeks a girl can claim to have her period in a row.

Or indeed the second reaction, mentally constructing and reconstructing the improbable but interesting story of what it was last night that made you short of breath.

[Little Bird]

Oh I'm so chuffed I'm on your side bar!

I too am an asthmatic. Bitch of a disease. I too was an addict of ventolin, couldn't go anywhere without it. When I moved to the city for university I ended up in hospital and worked out it was time to do something about controlling it instead of the other way round.

For nearly 5 years now I've been almost free of all inhalers, no preventers, no relievers, and it's been magic. Just recently things have changed and I've been wheezy. Time for a check up.

Hope your wheeziness subsides soon.

xLB

[Beth]

Its nice how they come in two colours. The two easiest to co-ordinate into a man's wardrobe, too.

Myself, I don't have much experience of asthma. The only sufferer in the family is my mothers' mother and possibly some of my mothers sisters, although I have no real interest in finding out.

Hope you're feeling better though... I must say the idea of being short of breath for anything other than over-exertion doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

[pocketpunk]

yep yep....thats the equivalent of having a nebulizer a day. My eldest had asthma from being a baby and was admitted to hosp during a particularly bad attack when she was 2. They administered 10 "puffs" of ventolin into a nebulizer and she sat there for however long it was and then ran around paed ward for about 2 hours because it made her "high".........

Have an expresso instead!

[overnighteditor]

Thanks for comments all.

My recent need for the inhaler was just due to cold weather, I think.

Interestingly, taking it for the first time in a long time means I will take it... a few times. Seems it's difficult to take it "just once".

I don't associate the inhaler with "getting excited" (to me it means only illness) - maybe this has something to do with the depiction of asthma in popular culture?

OE