My bathroom shares a wall with the apartment next door. Our toilets sit back-to-back, joined together by a “Y” pipe. The wall between them is thin. So thin that, every once in a while, I can hear my neighbor puke into her toilet.

She blares some techno. Then for about 2 minutes: a sequence of repetitive gagging sounds with short intervals of silence between them. Finally, a flush.

Shared Exorcisms

In the third grade, there was a spot at the far end of the playground where I’d sink fingers down my throat until yellow bile shot out.

Sometimes it only took the stomach acid hitting my tongue to make me feel better. But if I kept going, forcing my guts to squeeze together as tight as possible, I could experience a kind of blankness… and for a short while, my body became like a cloud and the world didn’t feel so rotten.

My nervous system is often infested by an excess (some unbearable “too-muchness” with no clear name or substance). It presses up against me from everywhere at once, forcing my outside and inside to fold into each other. My thoughts lose their shape, sounds melt into lights and textures; a uniform of pure intensity. Vomiting can make it stop.

Moving On

I don’t know when it all started. My mother once confessed to my psychiatrist that, starting at the age of six, she took notice of my little habit. Though I have no memory of her ever intervening.

It’s an ugly mechanism… especially in the long run. But it’s hard to care when I’m just trying to survive through the next hour.

My current lifestyle keeps me away from the worst triggers. That opens the door for milder (and safer) substitutes.

Still, when the world gets too heavy, no other ritual can soothe me so completely. When I hear my neighbor cut through that thin wall, I instantly think about the cloud feeling. And a small part of me is tempted. I don’t know; life is messy.