Liminal Sobs

This one's for my fellow emotional wrecks. You'll know exactly what I mean.

My bottom lip trembles at the news, the thought, the moment. My chin follows suit, dimpling and smoothing itself in little flicks that move in tandem with the cracks spreading across my heart. Feeling my face fight the emotions in real time just sends a giant fissure right down the middle, but at this point I'm still trying to hold its bleeding form together.

Next goes my voice. It wavers and cracks and ebbs and flows involuntarily, accompanying my quaking lip and chin and breaking heart. I clear my throat and swallow, begging the oncoming tsunami to crash off my shoulder with the weakly nonchalant move. Begging it not to ravage my head and pour from my readying face and lumped throat. I take deep breaths to force the swell down for fractions of seconds at a time, not nearly enough. I'm fighting back the tides, trying to save some semblance of face, of dignity, of togetherness.

The call ends, and I stare blankly into the void where their voice was. Processing. Preparing. Thoughts eddy out of my skull as it starts to spin and dizzy, readying for the onslaught of destruction. Readying for the battle to come in mere seconds.

I take a deep breath: in, in, in a little bit more. This is the moment where, by the computations of natural instinct, inhibitions peel back like the tide which bares the creatures underneath to the harsh elements. There can be no saving of dignity, no saving myself from descending into that familiar pit. I suck in just a bit more breath, and everything stills. Time pauses, waiting. A little more breath in. Lines and shapes and lights and darks start to blend together as my welling eyes attempt to block out the world entirely. The way is cleared for the swell, which I've seen gathering on the horizon as I tried to deny what was happening before my eyes.

And then it unleashes. The first breath that rasps and rattles out is halfway silent, halfway salvation in itself. Then, halfway to being rid of it, comes the sound. The harrowing peal of fresh devastation. It matches the pitch of my voice, bellowing like thunder that shakes a house to its foundations. When that first breath reaches its end, my voice tails off with a high pitched whine. And with that whine come the tears flowing. The stark, inky depths of my soul laid bare to this calamitous deliverance. They pour and pour, only coming stronger with each inhale, each exhale. My knees hit the vinyl floor, my shoulders slumping and eyes spilling torrents that flow straight to the cold ground. I am the picture of defeat, a fallen warrior, readying for the blade to bury itself in my back. Because I know that this is not the worst of it yet.

As suddenly as it began, in the course of a split moment, it all pauses. The eye of the storm. The dazed stupor. The blank stare out at blue skies beyond my window while everything behind my eyes falls into a bottomless pit. There is only cavernous dread here; the walls are slick with it and I can't get a hold. So down, down I fall, liminal space becoming me until the numbness and transience almost feels pleasant, like this is how I always was and always will be. It feels free here, in the way it feels free in a prison: body restrained, but soul laid bare, everyone knowing who you are, no holes barred. A free-fall of conscience.

A thought occurs, tugging at my chains and interrupting my trajectory. Of what might have been, had this terrible tragedy never taken place. A creeping speculative thought of what I could have, should have been doing at this moment, had my world not come tumbling down. And that single thought, that untouchable hope, and that slick, slick dread mix like Mentos and Coke, propelling me out of the pit and back into the tempestuous tidal wave.

And again I'm crying. Sobbing. Screaming. Punching the air and my bed and screaming, screaming, screaming into my pillow until my throat is torn to ribbons. But I don't stop. I don't stop stomping my feet. Flailing and hyperextending my limbs. A manic dance of which I perform with the epitome of reckless abandon, bordering on unabashed finesse. Kick, flail, spin, punch, jump, scream, choke, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat until the familiar moves feel as graceful as pirouettes and leaps. My soul is outside of me now, its tether having snapped somewhere between the whipping winds and shattering of my heart. I may have performed its exorcism myself, my manic gyration the language of summoning and release. In this moment, I wish myself to be Rumpelstiltskin, tearing my body straight down the middle just to replace the inner agony with outer. I wonder if I kick hard enough off the ground, flail my limbs fast and hard enough, will I propel myself off the ground and away from here? Find someone else who has removed their soul from their writhing form? So begins each repeated dance. Kick, flail, spin, punch, jump, scream, choke. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.

Finally, I tire. Finally, I calm. Finally, I'm back in my body. Well, almost. I'm here but I'm not here, seen but not heard, cared for but not taken care of. I'm a hollowed out shell, an exoskeleton of who I became when I had what I lost. There is no dread, no hope, no longing, no regret, no confusion. There are no thoughts whatsoever, my mind and body ravaged and spent, and satisfied to be so. This could be a glimpse of the end, I realize, when someday at the epilogue of my life I will have done all I could, but never all the things I wanted to. Just clarity and resignation remain, lapping quietly at the edges of my mind like a gentle tide. Peace. Liminal peace, yes, but peace nonetheless. Fragile, elevated, blissful liminal peace.