MOMENT

This is a post that's part of the Reverb 10 project. I'm still playing catchup.

December 3 – Moment.

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

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This is probably not for the faint of heart.

I'd avoid it if you are a bit of a hypochondriac and can't read about food poisoning. But it was one of the more humbling and intense moments that I can recall this year (there are some others, but this is most vivid; it helps that it happened just over a week ago). I’m probably sharing this against my better judgment, but this moment (once I get to it) was striking.

Read at your own risk, I guess.

The wafts of banana bread baking made me more nauseous than I can ever remember. My head ached. I went to bed early. Peeled the contacts away from my eyes. Put on long flannel pants, curled into bed with more than three blankets. I didn’t realize just how feverish I felt.

My head pounded just softly. We’re talking like a mild, constant bounce from a soft timpani mallet.

Remnants of A Bug’s Life movie are sounding from the living room downstairs. General clanks and clatter from my roommate cleaning up in the kitchen.

I dare not inhale from my nose for fear of tasting the banana bread air. Thing is: I generally love banana bread, but it’s too sweet this time around.

I entered into a strange dreamstate of not sleeping, but not being fully awake. I felt sick. A pit began to swell in my stomach. I was getting sick and didn’t know what to do.

This dreamstate lingers for 90 minutes. I don’t know if I ever fell asleep. You toss and turn in this void.

Suddenly, I feel it coming. I waver and wonder when I’m going to get out of bed.  I wince at the thought of what is going to come next, and at the same time, I realize it’s a necessary evil. The thought of just kneeling by the toilet and waiting is too excruciating. And there is NO WAY I’m going to make myself puke. So I wait until I know for certain it’s going to happen. Awful as it is, the only bit of hope I grasp is the fact that I’ll feel better when it’s over. One can only hope.

And I puke. I puke out an entire Chicken Burrito Bowl from Chipotle (complete with guac and chips). And in that mix is a Caramel Brluee Latte. It all comes back into the toilet. I could really describe this in graphic detail, but it’s already starting to give me a headache. And the puking isn’t the point of this entry. The moment I really want to recount is once it’s over.

I struggle to stand. My legs are shaking. I reach for the sink and cup my hands to rinse my face off.

I look into the mirror. It’s a fuzzy resolution. I’m not wearing glasses (for extreme fear they’d fall in the toilet). Drops of water remain in my goatee. There’s a repulsive taste in my mouth. I’m parched and want to gulp gallons of water.

Back to the mirror. I look as if I’m wearing makeup in a Tim Burton film. It’s red around my eyes and a vacuum has sucked the color from the rest of my face. I’m wiped out. A cold sweat appears across my brow. I shiver even though I can feel an unreasonable amount of heat and dampness in my armpits. It’s silent. The whole house is sleeping (unless they’ve woken up from my retching, which is entirely possible). Heavy, slow breaths. The heart blipping against my chest.

Tears well up in my eyes.

I seem to remember the corners of my mouth turning up. I’m smirking. Perhaps a small chortle resounded.

I feel ridiculously alive—vulnerable and tiny, yet alive and grand.

I don’t know that I can even do this moment any justice. But there is this really, remarkable sense of feeling that I am human at this moment of looking myself in the mirror. Seeing a self who has just gone through painful and rather humiliating act. I felt a bit like an animal down on the floor, hugging that porcelain. But I struggled back up to stand. And then I think about tough, emotionless, collected exterior. I know that armor can’t last forever and this vomiting was a kind of way to flush all that self-sufficient righteousness away, leaving me human and just alive.

This is a riveting and humbling notion.