Sliding Into Home

Just over 4000 words to go, just about. That means, if you're quick with the mental math, that I have written just over 45,000 words. Since November 5th. While working full time.

When I say that I almost start crying.

Feels like these last few thousand words should be a cakewalk, like I should be able to slide into home with no problem. But they feel daunting. Almost like I don't want to finish, which is a strange feeling, because why would I not want to finish when I've gotten this far.

Here is a somewhat startling and disgusting analogy: I feel like I'm at the point where I might start regurgitating my own innards.

Part of what I'm writing about is that horrible period in my early twenties, which hit its worst when I tried to kill myself by taking an overdose of acetaminophen. The reason the pills didn't kill me is because I started throwing up before I finished the bottle.

I continued to throw up for the next 12 hours. Till there was nothing solid left in my stomach, then through bile, through dry heaving, trembling on the bus to the hospital until I was gagging and heaving yet again in the emergency ward, sobbing because it hurt so much. My whole body felt like I'd been trying to quarter myself, each limb chained to something heavy and pulling, my torso starting to split down the middle, every muscle in agony.

A kind resident put her arm around my shoulder and held a metal bowl under my mouth. My body twisted into one last heave, and I felt something sliding up my esophagus for the first time in a few hours. What landed in the stainless steel bowl was white, pure white and glistening, honeycombed. The resident inhaled a sharp breath and I blinked. Fast.

I'd seen stuff that looked like that before, but only in the grocery store.

"Is that? That's the lining of my stomach, isn't it?"

"Yes. It is."

Part of me wanted to touch it, to feel what something usually buried so far inside me felt like, but I held back. The resident put the bowl on the nearest table out of sight, rubbed my back a bit more while I went back to crying.

How I feel now is how I felt in the moment before that chunk of my stomach detached itself and pulled up through me. I feel cleaned out, torn and tearing, emptied of everything, ringing hollow; my body still going forward. Going on.