Pockets of Air

In the second episode of Season 15 of Grey's Anatomy, Meredith talks about why it is scary AF to find yourself attracted to someone. She described the feeling as being akin to being introduced to air (for the first time) and you being afraid it will get taken away. I actually felt my breath leave me for a few seconds when she said that because WHOAH...I have felt all of that.

Falling for someone is scary. You may lay all your cards on the table and try to have control over the whole thing but you never truly know if this person will catch your fall. Rejection is such a hard pill to swallow and as much as it's lovely to have someone take your breath away, it's not so ideal when it is like you can't function without the pockets of air that their presence in your life brings.

I'll naturally always think of music when I need a way to make things make sense. Two songs came to mind as I watched that episode: "Jordin Sparks featuring Chris Brown - No Air" and "Ottis Redding - Try A Little Tenderness".  I'm not entirely sure that "losing you is like living in a world with no air" is anyway to live but it seems to almost always happen. I'm not sure why it is that when we attach ourselves to another person, we want to give up on our individuality so much that we need them to breathe...live...exist. That without them, nothing makes sense.

I like how Ottis seems to think that if you try to just love someone with a little tenderness; love them softly, flaws and all that you may just get this love thing right. Understand someone and allow them to understand you. That with a little tenderness, we may just be open to the notion that we can be ourselves and not the version of ourselves we think we should be, judging by our dating history and what we think an ideal realtionship should be like and how we should mould ourselves into the roles that give us that ideal. The weariness and fear to fall again comes from having had more errors in the trials of love than anyone deserves. We become so vulnerable and sometimes guarded because of the hurt we've experienced in the past. But then you meet someone and you feel the lightheadedness again and you have to battle with yourself once again with thoughts of whether this is worth the troubles of it ending with you struggling for air should it fall apart. Unlike the other three elements, you can't see air. This is probably what makes it difficult to process when the person that once romantically took your breath away is also the person that looks likely to have caused our brains to go without oxygen for too long and we start being irrational.

It is vital that we keep as much of our individuality as possible when entering into a relationship. I believe that that is where the most important pockets of air reside. The ones that will help you realise that people we get romantic with should be life partners and not life support machines.