Liminal

“People leave here feeling differently than when they came in. You’ll see.” Viv smiles at me as she quickly works my hands over.

This nail salon is one of my places of light and transience, it’s where I go when I’m within transition phases of something dying so something new can come about.

Many old things have died in my life, as they always do, so I’m now in no-man’s land, where the buds have yet to pop through the ash and the lava has just now cooled, but I can feel it.

It’s coming.

It’s this time when although I haven’t had one in months, I have a panic attack on the train in the middle of the day, on my way to the salon. Underground, the speedy Red Line throws me from side to side and I don’t cry but I am bug-eyed like the rest of the midday train riders; strange and uncomfortable.

Claustrophobia is a new experience, a new sensation to process as my brain barrages fear and fight/flight reactions across my body. I stand still and text my friend:

currently having a panic attack on the train
so i’m going to text you
breathing is weird
my hands are sweaty

— keep texting

i feel like fainting
and crying
i hate these man

— bring the type bubbles back

i feel claustrophobic as fuck

— when is the train ride over?

a while, and i don’t want to get off the train because i want to be home and not around people
it will pass
my head hurts
ok coming down
thank you

— you can keep typing even if it’s coming down

And so it goes. Paradigm shifts disrupt my mind’s status quo, so reality must adjust, and that adjustment takes time. The in-between state of what was and what will be, that is where I am learning to find grace and quiet and comfort in the unknown, the dead, the hard, the ????, the step forward in the fog.

Viv’s best friend Allison walks in, sits down to have her nails done by Viv’s sister. The four of us become a cloud of pink and yellow, connecting, talking about therapy and recovery from partners and addictions and traumas. I say with sincerity to Viv she is becoming a healer because of what she’s been through and what she’s healing in herself, how she shares that wisdom with others (even when she looks down and avoids eye contact, her voice low as she shares her dark secrets). She beams. The opposite of darkness is connection.

We have both become more gentle and ferocious as the years have gone on. When we met we were both fighting or ignoring our demons, now we’re breaking open. Her instagram posts are lighter, more focused on the divine feminine and herself than before. I post pictures of my art. We trade likes and comments until the next time I see her, where I’ll wander in bewildered during a time when I walk between what’s dead and what will be born, to emerge a little closer to the new bloom, the new moon, and what’s next.

This essay is part of a project where as often as we can, Nora Molinaro and I choose a prompt and then write an essay.

The prompt for this week was “Write about the life/death/life cycle”.