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My Gen X Playlist: Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michaelson

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Daily writing prompt
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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I never knew I didn’t like tight spaces until my first MRI. It sounded harmless when the doctor first ordered one. I thought how fun, I’m going into a little tube. How sci-fi that’s going to feel.

They hit the button and I moved deep into the tube. I had my eyes closed at first. I was relaxed. I opened them to take a peek to see what it was like inside and suddenly I felt panicked. There was a plate about an inch in front of my face. There was so little room, I felt saran wrapped in this tiny space. I immediately shut my eyes hard. I started taking deep breaths and counting in my head to try to calm the waves of panic. I thought about hitting the panic button so they could release me from this experience. To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t. Breathing. Counting. I reached ten, then twenty, then thirty. I could slowly feel my heart rate begin to subside. I was going to be OK, just as long as I kept my eyes clamped shut and continued to take long slow breaths. It was the longest 90 minutes of my life.

I’ve been going back for annual MRIs since I had my benign brain tumor removed. Thank goodness the results come back clean as a whistle. I’m only in the MRI for forty minutes at a time now, so that’s not too bad. I still keep my eyes glued shut, though. I learned my lesson the hard way. Now you need a crow bar to loosen them. When I feel the anxiety creep up, I breathe and I count. That always seems to do the trick. Soon they’ll extend the frequency and hopefully it will stretch to every two years. If you ask me, that’s certainly a place that I don’t want to visit – deep inside an MRI machine. But for now I gotta so I will. I just clamp my eyes shut and breathe…

Ingrid Michaelson released Keep Breathing in 2007. I wish they would allow me to listen music in the MRI. This definitely would make my MRI playlist.

“Keep Breathing” captures anxiety’s ability to strip everything down to its core with the lyrics:

“All I know is I’m breathing / All I can do is keep breathing.”

These lines portray the feeling of being overwhelmed and uncertain while persisting despite discomfort.

Choosingtherapy

I just copied and pasted the lyrics below and noticed there really isn’t much to them. There are a few lines, but the bulk of the song is

All we can do is keep breathing.

I’m no music aficionado, I just like listening to good music, or music I like. Sometimes they are not one in the the same. What I’m getting at is I have no place to critique or offer a valid opinion. But my first thought was, how simple. I said this in my not so nice tone in my head. But then it occurred to me, maybe there was some intentionality behind it. Breathing is suppose to be a simple, natural act, not needing much thought. Yet as the song explains, some of us need a reminder, especially those of us panicked in an MRI machine. And there must be others out there in their own personal MRIs that follow them throughout the day. Mine only lasts forty minutes, once a year. I can’t really complain. So, yeah, simple is OK. Breathing is OK. That’s really all we can do.

I love this song so much because I interpret it so very literally. I have Cystic Fibrosis and had a double lung transplant in January of 2010. This song is very descriptive of my feelings through my struggles. Some days it feels like all I can do is breathe and that should be enough.

YouTube comment by mirables

I just had an anxiety attack two hours ago and I’m still tense. I was having a hard time finding music that could relax me and this song really helped me right now.

YouTube comment by marlenevasquez1633

This song is so important to my dear old friend. She’s always had such heavy problems, more than anyone I know. Yet she keeps breathing.

YouTube comment by kristinaboston6309

I discovered this song during a very harrowing time in my life. I was walking one of my favourite trails when this played on my Google Play radio station and I remember looking up at the sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves. I drew my first deep breath, just as the song told me to. I remember the feeling of peace filling my body and tears pooling in my eyes. It felt like I was breathing for the first time after several months of numbness.

YouTube comment by wendyyyyy

–

For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

The storm is coming but I don't mind
People are dying, I close my blinds

All that I know is I'm breathing now

I want to change the world
Instead I sleep
I want to believe in more than you and me

But all that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now

All that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing 

All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing now

30 thoughts on “My Gen X Playlist: Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michaelson”

  1. Pingback: My Gen X Playlist: Keep Breathing – Ingrid Michaelson – prem premi

  2. I’m so with you on MRIs. Get me out of that machine. They’re so loud too. Eyes glued shut and focused on your breath is the only way to get through it. Lovely song. 🎵

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  3. Yes. Eyes closed for me too when in them. And although I am deaf and so hearing aids out before I go in, it is still loud to me.
    The last time I was in one was last year, or year before. The difference I found this time for me to when I last went in one is because I am deafer, I felt the vibrations more. I still felt like I was feeling them partly on the way home.

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    1. I still feel it for a little bit afterwards, too. The last one I was in was a newer one, so it felt bigger. Someone needs to create a friendlier MRI. Sorry you feel the vibrations, my MRI sister. Hope you don’t have to get them too often.

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  4. Oh I’m with you here! I had to go for an MRI once at 3 in the morning (brutal) and the put me in the tube and like you I opened my eyes and immediately shut them, I kept saying to myself “I’m in bed, relax, I’m laying in bed…” eventually I fell asleep cause they pulled me out and the technician shook me awake lol

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      1. yeah man! reach enlightenment, I’m serious! That’s the perfect place to start. I’ve read about a mediation teacher going into a sensory deprivation tank to test his meditation ability.

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  6. Beautifully written post. I can picture you on the trail discovering the song, which is lovely. I know it from somewhere, maybe long ago. I wrote today about songs coming to us when the time is right… this one seems like a perfect example.

    I felt panic rising as I read of the MRI experience and my eyes must have looked like saucers when I got to the part about 90 minutes! Meditation and breathing FTW.

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  7. I’m sorry you have to go through this once a year! 40 minutes is a long time. You can meditate during MRI. That hopefully will help!

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  8. Dude, I wasn’t even fully in the tube and I nearly panicked. You did way better than me. If I ever have to go fully into the tube, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. They might have to sedate me or something. I don’t even know how you managed almost an hour. I hardly could do the fifteen minutes needed for my chest. Even the thought of it gives me the shakes.

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  9. Yes, MRI’s are anxiety inducing! I’ve only had an abdominal one where my head was still partially out of the tube. I still freaked out. I did what you did and closed my eyes and tried to focus on a song in my head.

    Have you ever tried an open MRI? I hear they are available at some places. I just found out that I need an MRI for my knee. Hopefully, I won’t have to go all the way inside the tube.

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  10. Pingback: jump the highest bridge | Musings of a Taiwanese American Adoptee

  11. I remember vividly my MRI when they discovered I needed heart surgery. It was a very long day, extended with the MRI. I was so ready to go home. Oddly, in the tube my pap came to me in a vision. He told me ‘everything will be all right son ‘ . Pap had been deceased 12 years by then. But he was right though. I got through the MRI. I got through the surgery. Later, I remembered, Da had been a imaging technician at the VA when he was still working. Now, that thought still gives me chills!

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