I am in charge of my breathing.

Several times an hour, without being asked and without anyone noticing, your body takes one long slow breath and lets it out. Nobody taught it this. It happens mid-sentence, in queues, in sleep — a small automatic reset that has been running your whole life.

In a body that can feel completely ungovernable, that is one of the few dials that answers to a hand on it. Not a cure and not a trick. Just a place where the automatic and the deliberate happen to overlap, which is a useful thing to know about on a day when nothing else appears to be taking instructions.