Sometimes I still get that feeling.
The feeling when you look around, atmosphere grey and chilled, stretched, like a corpse. When the pressure surrounding everything is so tenuous, so fragile, it feels as if a single whispered syllable could shatter the world. That feeling when your heartbeat seems to still, seems to falter. Like it's just sitting, nestled between your ribs gently, cradled there. You feel nothing, not love, not sadness. Just unity. Some people may relate with what I'm attempting to describe; others may wonder. If you wonder, you are lucky. If you know... Well, you know.
At times I still feel that tightness, the pressure. The feeling that you can't place at first-when it seems all you have to do is reach out and touch a certain point in space, and all the answers will be yours. When I feel it, I hesitate. I don't reach out. Some questions I don't want answered, for the simple fact that the answers may be more horrible than the original question. I cling to the arrogance; the ignorance; the safety of not knowing. Braver souls than I have touched that point and survived.
I would not be one of them.
It's a pulling; a tugging; a lulling; an extraction. You tilt your head back and close your eyes into it, unsure of what it is. It seems so primal. Nobody ever describes it to us-those of us who are left to bear it alone-so you wonder. And, human as we are, curious as our nature describes, we touch it, and we are shattered. We are shattered, and we are made whole. For in that single point lies the answers to our existence. It strips away all precedent. All illusion. It shows us what we are.
The first time I felt it, I stood, nine years old, at my father's graveside. I stared into the hole he was going to be placed in. I could see my reflection in his white casket. Could see the polished, primed, steamed creases of my suit in the metal bars that suspended the polished, painted wood. And I wondered how someone could lose that animation that sparked in the eyes, moved the hands, articulated the tongue.
Why we see corpses as something to be embellished, I will never know. It seems insulting, to take the cold, stiff, lifeless limbs and arrange them delicately. A mockery, to make them look alive when everyone knows they aren't. It frightened me when my relatives went up and openly weeped over the rotting flesh of my father, put on display at the front of a large room. Because as much embalming fluid they inject and slather over the skin and muscle tissue, the simple fact remains that as soon as someone dies-as soon as their galloping heart stops beating-they begin to rot.
I found their acts of open emotion disgusting, as well. Great sobs racked through the bodies of my aunts and cousins. Tears smeared their gently applied makeup, and their faces curled into themselves. I couldn't bear to look at them. I chose a chair and drew my knees to my chest, alone, young, frightened, and yet old. Older than the earth beneath our feet; the earth my father was to soon contribute to.
Somehow I was elected to help carry his wooden box. I don't call it a casket. It seems too fancy a title for something so simple. My father was packaged, like merchandise, only to be buried like the lowest of things. I forced myself not to look, not to think about what I was carrying. The cloyingly sweet smell of perfume wafted and curled from the funeral home and I gagged. Perfume to cover the smell of decay. To create the illusion that what we were carrying was still a human being, something to be handled with care.
I stood in the rain as the preacher spoke. I found it ironic and insulting that he was quoting the scripture of God to my family. My whole family knew my father was atheist. He openly laughed at the idea of a higher being. "We are all animals, Eridan," he would tell me. "We are no better than the lion, or the gazelle. The only thing that places us at the top of the food chain is our numbers." I clung to those words as a child. I cling to them now, still, years after his death. Because he was right. He was right, and no one else saw. My family, so stricken with grief that they insulted his memory, his character, with religion-they never saw. And they never will see.
They will never feel the tugging, the extraction. The pulling of what others would call a soul. The hooks that pull away all reservation, all walls inside of yourself. It makes you breathless and you cling to the ignorance childishly, afraid to realize that we are not what we have always believed we are. We are not higher. In no way are we superior. I say these words lightly, but do not allow them to sink in fully. For if I did... I would end my existence, because it is truly pathetic.
My flashbacks end and presently, my eyes open. I feel that tugging, stronger than ever, and I stumble into my bathroom, my stomach heaving. I lean over the toilet and throw up the meager contents of my stomach. I fight against the tugging that has plagued me for seven years. Nine to sixteen-sixteen to twenty-twenty to eighty-I no longer know how old I am. So close am I to that point in space. The answers are mine, and yet I pull away. The merging of myself and reality is too much. And I will push, and fight against it.
Because I have a name for the sensation. The tugging, the emptying. It is called growing up.
It's hard.
It's hard, and no one understands.
(*)(*)(*)
"Eridan! Eridan, where are you?"
I look into the mirror, astonished that I still possess a reflection. My cheeks are pale, sunken. My eyes, normally a vibrant violet, are dull, and they look grey. The shadows underneath them blossom in crescents, the color my eyes should be, the color of the streak in my hair. I tighten my scarf around my neck before I walk downstairs, the winding staircase giving me the usual sense of dizziness that accompanies the new house. The white marble of the steps is slippery, and I cling to the banister with my left hand tightly. My Converse squeak and I hold my breath as I descend, and I only release it when my feet touch the landing safely.
"Eridan Ampora, you're going to be late!"
I roll my eyes at my aunt. She should be gone by this afternoon, thankfully. Her Scottish accent is thick, even thicker than mine and my uncle Dualscar's; if you hadn't grown up around her, you'd never be able to understand her. Her plump figure is waiting by the thick mahogany double doors that lead to the exit of the mansion, fussing, fluttering, and I sigh at her. She pats me down, straightens my shirt, tries to pat down my hair. My hand lashes out before her fingers can even consider touching it. "Don' touch my hair," I warn, and she smiles at me. She's used to this by now. Her look drifts down to my scarf, and she grows sad, eyes watering. I immediately get uncomfortable.
"Your da would be so proud of you..." Her voice breaks and she starts crying. "I miss him so much. I wish you didn' have to leave Scotland...Leave him..." I clench my jaw because I've heard this before. Time to shut her down before she starts rambling.
"I moved here because in two years I'll be eighteen," I remind her, "and his business will be mine. He'd understand." If he wasn't just a pile of writhing, slick worms, I thought, but didn't voice it. My aunt was a firm believer in Christianity-so much so that when she first discovered me using gel in my hair she'd almost fainted. "Eridan Ampora, you aren't a homosexual, are you? Tell me you're not one of those unnatural gay people, please, my heart couldn't take it if I knew my nephew was damned for eternity..."
I'd told her no, I wasn't gay. I'd lied. If I'd told her the truth, she would have locked me in the house and never let me out. Voicing my morbid thoughts would "force her to lock me in a mental institute and pray the good lord has mercy on my mind". Whatever. Anyway. I continued talking. "I need to learn from Dualscar how everythin' works, remember. I'll miss you." Another lie. The past seven years with her had been awful. Forced to pray and dress up every Sunday. Forced to acknowledge a God I didn't even believe existed. It was insulting. My father wouldn't have stood for it. But as I said, he was gone. Worm food. My heart felt his absence, missed his laughter. I never talked to him, because I knew he wasn't there. He didn't exist anymore. I didn't believe in an afterlife, or a God. The only weakness I ever showed was wearing his scarf every day. A God awful fashion choice (if you'll excuse my hypocrisy by using the term God) because it didn't go with anything I ever wore, but small sacrifices had to be made.
It was tattered at the ends, about three feet in length. It had stopped smelling like him two weeks after I started wearing it. It was white and blue, plaid with variations of said primary color, streaked through with said shade. If I've ever loved anything besides my father, it was his scarf.
Presently, my aunt was speaking again. "Remember to get good grades in school. Education is important. Take a business course so you know how to manage the hauls, and..." She continued on. I pretended to listen, but in all honesty, my mind was elsewhere. I glanced at the clock.
"I have to get to school," I interrupted, and she stopped, hands fluttering around her mouth. She smiled and kissed my cheeks, hugging me hard. I wrapped my arms around her loosely as she squeezed what was left of the life out of me.
"I love you Eridan. Be safe."
I nodded, walking out the door without a backwards glance.
Good riddance.
(*)(*)(*)