Breathing In Is Borrowing, Breathing Out Is Repaying

A breath comes in empty-handed and goes out the same way. No invoice, no stamp with the date it was borrowed, no line at the bottom for me to sign. And all day the body quietly performs one slightly strange task: borrow and return, return and borrow. I can forget the glass of water I just drank, forget what was in the meal I just ate, forget where I put a thing I was holding three minutes ago. The breathing is the one thing I am not allowed to forget. It does the job for me, evenly, diligently, without asking for a raise. Which is lucky, because if this had been left to my memory I would not last a morning.

Breathing in is borrowing. Breathing out is repaying. It sounds as simple as taking something from a hand and putting it back where it was, and whichever way I turn it there is something unsettled in it. If the body lives on a loan taken out second by second, how much of what I call mine actually belongs to me? This hair, these eyes, these two hands, the back that starts filing complaints when I sit too long, all of it runs on water, food, air and a pile of other things arriving from outside. I say my body very firmly, and it operates like a rented house: the utilities still have to be topped up, and whatever breaks, the landlord is also the tenant.

The joke is that the tenant loves decorating. Thin hair, find a way to thicken it. Thick hair, complain about washing it. Straight hair wants curls, curly hair wants straightening, and freshly dyed hair has to be shielded in the shower like a national monument. Then skin, lips, nails, eyebrows, a separate accessory for each, and together they would stock a small stall. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good. I know the feeling of wanting to step outside as a presentable version of yourself. It is only funny that sometimes we tend the curtains more carefully than the plumbing, worry that the paint colour is off and never hear the house rattling inside.

The body is not good at elegant speech. It speaks in aches, in a night of bad sleep, in a breath shorter than usual, in a leg that will suddenly no longer walk as fast as it did. When you are young a lot of it runs on instinct: hold the book right up to your face, bite something hard, run up the stairs, stay awake a few hours longer. Then one day the book has to move further away. The food has to be a bit softer. The handrail on the stairs becomes noticeably more charming. None of those changes announce themselves with a drum. They shift a little at a time, small enough that it is easy to shrug and say I am a bit tired today. And then a bit stretches across many days while you carry on pretending not to notice.

There is a story I once heard, about someone who cooked breakfast for their mother that morning, sat and ate with her, and kissed her twice before stepping into the next room. And died that same morning. I do not want to use it to frighten myself into hurrying, and I do not want to turn every meal into a tearful farewell. What holds me is how chillingly ordinary it is. No siren. No sad music arriving on cue. The morning was still a morning, the food was still there, the two kisses were still warm, and one breath simply did not come back.

So borrowing a breath does not make life feel short in the sense of cramming more in. I have worked flat out, twenty hours a day when it was needed, so I know the feeling of using exhaustion as evidence of being useful. From outside it looks impressive. Look closely and it is a person spending borrowed goods as if they were free. Deadlines look very serious, sitting silently on the screen watching you. The body has deadlines too, and it does not display a countdown. Maybe because there is no number to look at, I keep assuming the account still has plenty in it.

Turn it the other way: if you keep remembering that what you borrowed has to be returned, do you lose the joy of it? I do not think so. Knowing a flower will wilt does not make its colour fade today. Knowing the coffee will go cold does not take the smell out of the first mouthful. What thins pleasure is usually not that it is brief, but that I have it while my head has already gone somewhere else. The body sits here, the thoughts are at tomorrow's meeting, the irritation has gone back to yesterday, and only the breathing stays behind on shift. It borrows, it repays, and the person whose name is on the loan is out.

I still do not know whether to call the body an asset or a debt. Asset sounds like something you can put away, and it changes every day. Debt is too heavy, because it is the body that lets me do very ordinary things: hold a small child, call my father, sit and listen to someone talk, fiddle with a workflow and then repair whatever I have just broken. You need hands to touch. You need feet to arrive. You need a voice to say the thing that needs saying. This borrowed item is temperamental, the warranty is vague, and the spare parts get harder to find, and it is also the reason thoughts do not stay stuck inside a head.

So I keep turning the question over without wanting to settle it. On one side, fragility. On the other, the ability to do something while you are still here. One side says do not waste it, the other says do not panic. Maybe between them is a way of living that does not need to be extraordinary, only slightly less unnatural: when you are tired, admit you are tired; when it hurts, listen; when it is good, be there; when you love someone, do not leave the words waiting in your head. And right now the rented house still has its lights on. One breath in. One breath out. No receipt, no promise, only that steady rhythm of borrowing and returning.