CONFESSIONS OF AN ANXIOUS STARGAZER

By Teresa McIntosh-Hall

I have asthma and I am anxious. I also have three dogs and three cats living inside my home, as well as two people who vape when they drink a beer, which lately has been quite a bit.

I am also a terrible housekeeper and the only thing standing between me and mounds of dust is a can of Pledge and a burst of energy – both which are running low.

I am a poster child for asthmatics’ anonymous.  Which is basically a made-up club for people who have asthma but live like we don’t. 

COVID has complicated the situation even more because now when I have a coughing fit, I don’t know if it’s asthma or COVID, which ultimately leads to anxiety. Am I suffocating to death because three wet dogs are at the foot of my bed or is it because some A-hole who sat next to me on the airplane refuses to get vaccinated?  

As my breathing gets worse and worse, I sometimes end up outside at 4:00 AM sucking on an inhaler, looking up at the stars and asking God what he did with all the fresh air because I ain’t getting any.

Don’t ask me why but the one thing I can do to calm myself when I feel anxious is to look up at the clear night sky.  I will sometimes spot the big dipper or Venus in the westward sky and declare myself healed.  For whatever reason it’s a psychological trick I play on myself…a coping skill that I learned over the years to help decrease the anxiety I feel when I can’t take a deep breath or when the world feels heavy on my shoulders.

I highly recommend stargazing as an unofficial coping skill.

For me it’s a way to get better control of my breathing and to feel less anxious. It’s a way for me to remember my place in the world. 

My place isn’t in front of this computer screen.  It isn’t behind a desk at work. It isn’t sitting in traffic.  

It is instead under the blanket of the night sky where I attempt to reclaim what the modern world has stolen from me…a sense of being. Just being.

The night sky reminds me that I am just a tiny speck of dust on a blue rock, spinning one thousand miles per hour in the darkness, as the light from a gazillion shooting stars race towards infinity.  The pupils in my eyes expand as they stretch to capture this ancient and amazing light sent to us from the cosmos billions of miles away.

I toss my inhaler aside. I inhale. I exhale. The cold winter air rushes into my lungs like medicine.

It is then that I realize the universe really DOES have enough oxygen for me if I will just allow myself to receive it. The breath of my mystery creator fills my lungs every single day. 

I have to remind myself every now and then to be grateful for what little time I do have left. The blue rock spins so fast and the ride is so short.

By Teresa McIntosh-Hall

12/31/2021