I Hear the Door, Opening from Inside

Touched myself. Found heaven. But, as these things go, I didn't know I had an audience.

Have you ever heard the saying that 'it’s all in the breathing'?

It’s past noon. I’m in my room. Maybe it’s the spirit of the devil that possessed me, but my body already pressed through my clothes. 

I hear the door. But I’m not sure whether someone is leaving or returning. It’s not that I decided they were leaving and just ran with it…

That’s not what happened. Even now, while I write this, it is just the fact of the matter: I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. The door closing just had to mean that I was now alone in my room. Alone in that house. Because my hands were already between my thighs, seeking.

I didn’t know what it was that I wanted. When I get like this, usually, I think I’m trying to reach a point of release. But was this about release?

The Youtuber on my laptop holds a magnifier to the camera lens that makes his lips the size of the world, round and swollen. I am pulsating in my seat. I’m balancing my entire existence on my tailbone, on the precipice. My nails dust between my body. Chest tight. I’m a panting dog. 

The skin on my shoulders prickle. I'm being taken somewhere I might not be able to return from. The ground melts beneath me. Then I am melting into myself. Pull aside the cloth of my clothes. Southbound. 

I press my fingers where they want to go. But this is the situation where I don’t want to spoil the fun by being too eager. This moment isn’t about relief after all. It’s about transcendence. At least that's what I think. Does it matter now?

My breathing skips. Then picks up, again. And catches.  Chest tight, but, simultaneously, rising toward the heavens despite itself. I am sucking in so much air I feel like I am becoming aloft. 

Releasing a breath feels like someone pressing down on something I can’t even reach. I, who was already reaching so far inside of myself, couldn’t begin to stir this kind of result. 

Again, my breath caught. Then stuttered around a whimper. Knees trembling. Stomach grabbing. Jerking. The noiselessness of the room pendulums between my eardrums in a ringing tremor. I am somewhere far removed from this chair… My room… This house… 

Things that I could only articulate through fiction, now sizzled like electricity through my epidermis. To say, seeking release… Wasn’t it so superficial? 

In hindsight, was I even touching myself? Or was I actually just holding myself through an emotion that was already boiling to the surface of my consciousness? I wanted to capture it so that I could access it whenever I missed this moment. 

There had been times when I thought I was close to transcendence… But truly, I know now that you wouldn’t be able to recognize it if you were truly meeting the heavens. In a moment like that, my understanding of vision blackened, and I was introduced to another version of seeing. 

I didn’t need to access a memory. I wasn’t even trying…Thinking meant realizing. Thus, I couldn’t allow myself to think at that moment. Breathing returned me to that elusive sensation. Brought me down to the molecules of the experience. Pushed me, and just as I was plummeting… I sucked in another breath. And, again, was taken aloft.

Somehow, maybe it’s because, in the end, I was in fact thinking, but the moment passes. Perhaps, I was returning to a place of fear. Taken back to the enclosure of my room, that house. 

Then I’m laughing. Belly laughs. Shoulders shaking and eyes tearing. Was I losing my mind? What is this? How did I return from this? How do I release it or would I eternally seek transcendence? 

This thought stirs another round of laughter. My stomach catches and I sink into my seat; tailbone bruised from balancing my entire body weight on my chair.

Then I hear the door, opening from inside the house.