Difficulty breathing

I’ve been having trouble breathing lately. It’s been pretty bad, so much so that I had to visit the doctor for it, only for her to tell me: “you should do some breathing exercises”. Yeah, that’s useful. This isn’t a physical issue, it’s a psychological one. It’s the anxiety and the stress getting to me. My chest feels tight, and my breath feels like it doesn’t go all the way into my lungs. I’ve felt this way before, I think. When I was a teenager. But not since then. Why is it back now?

I’ve had a lot on my plate recently. My boyfriend and I broke up, my aunt had surgery, my brother had COVID, my grandma had heart surgery, some financial issues, I started therapy again, and I realized I am into women. It’s all of these things at once that have caused these issues, I think. But the last thing is the scariest.

I think I’ve always known that I like women, at least since I’ve been a teenager. My attraction for men is an explored attraction. I know what it feels like. But, what I feel for women is so foreign, unexplored. Scary. And I don’t know what’s going to come out of this exploration. That’s what terrifies me.

I mean, I don’t know what to expect – will kissing a woman change my whole life? Will it shatter my identity, and I have to find a new way to identify? I think that’s the issue here. That word. Identity. I think what terrifies me the most about this whole thing is that I’m losing my sense of identity, and I have to reconstruct it. I feel like the ‘me’ I have known for the majority of my life has been a lie, and I have to rebuild my sense of identity. It’s like: if this is who I am, did I ever really know myself? What am I supposed to do with this new identity that I’m unfamiliar with?

What does it mean for me, for the people I love? What are the rules? What’s expected of me? To me, the problem isn’t who I’m attracted to. I am terrified, yes. But I don’t see this as a problem. Instead, what I see as the problem is my sense of identity coming into question. Who am I? Was I always this person? Did something happen that changed me? I don’t like having my identity challenged. It’s utterly terrifying. But I have to face it. I need to.

Or the difficulty with my breathing will never go away.