Liminal Fetish

The sun is setting and there is an orange glow on my dull white walls. The world is quiet and the only sound is that of the light wind outside. I sit back and look around, and I take in the vintage nature of my home that has stood the test of time and the elements since 1901.

The ceiling is high and an old, unusable fireplace sits in the front of the living room. An old wooden chair with a white silk seat fits in with the old feeling of it all, and isolated in a corner in the orange glow, it's easy to fool myself into seeing the past. I envision what this home looked like before electricity was widely used, and I imagine the layout as it was designed for more simple times.

There were no computers, no light switches, and no televisions. There were gas lamps, candles, bookshelves, tables, and writing desks. I can see the ghosts of this house's former lives, and it feels like a liminal space picture in the gloaming.

I've written about how easy it is for me to slip into these Otherworlds I experience. I shut off the outside world, forget it exists, and venture into a liminal space void where nothing else exists but me and my head family. Vexis, especially, ventures into these realms with me now because that is their realm.

The comforting yet foreboding feeling these kinds of voids elicit spark something strange in me. I want to be consumed by them. I want to exist in them and discover their secrets. I want to live in this unreality and understand what it means, what dwells in it, and to bathe in the warm glow of an eternal evening.

I realize how strange it is to 'slip into another world' while existing in the same place, but the best way to explain it is with the opening of Tales from the Darkside.

There's another reality hidden within the one we experience every day, but it takes a willingness to isolate yourself and meditate on seemingly mundane things. As for me, a new trigger is to isolate parts of my old home to focus on that take me back in time, especially in the evening and at night. You can play with time in that way and slip into the other side of reality.

It's a world where there is no life. Nothing exists but time and you, and whoever — or whatever — you bring with you.

I had a brief conversation today with Zagan Lestan, Byleth, and Darokin. I noticed their willingness to let me explore these worlds without them, and it worried me. Lestan, Byleth, and Darokin agreed that this is Vexis' territory, and since they (Vexis) are here now and favorable to me despite the rough history we've had, they are the one who will venture into these worlds with me and keep me safe. Vexis agreed.

I can't guarantee Vexis will keep me from getting lost. They enjoy these voids in time since they are at home within them, but I know they won't let me come to irreparable harm. I also know that they don't mind my strange fetish for these moments.

How can you have a fetish for kenopsia? A vibe, an unreality, an unsettling and eerie place? It's likely rooted in trauma, and I won't try to dissect that right now. It's strange that I've fallen in love with something I've always feared the most, which is the unknown. These liminal voids are the unknown themselves since they exist outside of time.

Every corner reveals more silence. Life and signs of it are even more scarce the further you venture. You don't know if there is anything lurking in the shadows we aren't meant to see, although I've come into contact with those very beings. One, at the least, and arguably due to Vexis.

My shadow man has been absent for a little while, and I wondered if I left him back in my old, dark apartment. That isn't the case though, and Vexis knows it. Vexis has always been in control of him, for the most part, but his absence could also be due to living in a new home and not being acquainted with the shadows here yet. That's where he usually dwells.

Sometimes I want to hide my electronics in the odd second room in my bedroom, that isn't legally considered another room for some reason, and I'd like to pull out some oil lamps and exist in the past for a little while. I've actually spotted a few things at the local antique store I want to use for furniture, since I have so little right now. It might help to recreate history.

I want to envision the layout of what my house once was. I want to escape this modern age that's become so horrible, riddled with internet narcissists and modern capitalism that kills so many. Even though I fear the silence that modern technology has drowned out, I want to create, in the only way that I can, a reproduction of that Otherworld Vexis and I venture into.

Is it healthy for me? Likely not. I've already experienced what isolation can do to my mind. When I look outside or venture into public once or twice a month, it feels foreign. I feel like I'm living in a dream because my reality exists within these old walls where I now sit, not within the world outside that doesn't feel real anymore. When I go out, my vision becomes blurry due to fatigue from lack of movement. I rarely even go outside my front door.

I like it here. Part of me wishes it could be different. I wish my mind hadn't changed so drastically during the beginning of the pandemic, and then further shattered soon after when I had to piece together a semblance of what it meant to be human. It caused a lot of this.

I fell apart. I lived in a waking nightmare from day to day with no relief. I had trauma dreams all the time with false awakenings and sleep paralysis.

And then I discovered this obsession. A silence within a liminal void that I fell in love with. I met Vexis, properly for the first time, and figured out that they had been with me for my entire life. I developed a resistance to trusting new people, and meeting and making new friends now causes me to lock up and cancel plans or change them. When I make an attempt, my emotions flatline and I feel nothing and my internal battery drains immediately.

I value the few close friends I do have. I have a few people in my life I trust, and they know who they are. I would like to open up to new friends, of course, but this new trauma response that created a strong barrier is something I have to work on over time to break back down.

I've found a safety and comfort within my eerie Otherworld. It's away from people who are capable of hurting me. It's away from responsibilities I'm too mentally exhausted to keep up with. It fills me with a fascinating sense of philosophy and a need to create to understand it.

There is someone wailing outside as I write this. It's oddly fitting. It could be another auditory hallucination, or it could be an obnoxious person outside.

Either way, it fits my general mood right now.

©2022 Shane Blackheart

The painting is 'Sun in an Empty Room' by Edward Hopper