sheepshead bay regal

I think the perimeter outside the Sheepshead Bay Regal is a liminal space. I leave the theater, and I am no longer real. I was hardly real before I went in, but I'm far less real now. Everyone else is real, though—that I know for certain.

I walk down the never-ending ramp, my bag bouncing up and down against my stomach. Then the bag somehow disappears. I keep walking and then my torso disappears. I keep walking and then the rest of my body disappears. My body turns into a concept, an invisible construct with no seeming bounds. If I get hit by a car, the car will go through me and the director will yell "CUT!" and I'll turn around and smile, and everyone will applaud but no one will see me, but they'll know I was there, and that's good enough for me because I like being an idea that passes through people's heads more than being an actual person they think they know but really don’t. Then, I'll leave the theater again because this is a time loop and I am doomed to repeat this cycle forever because I have walked into a trap I set for myself. 

I think the perimeter outside the Sheepshead Bay Regal is a portal to nowhere. I leave the theater and everything has moved one micrometer in the wrong direction. I sense it, the off-ness, but I can't wrap my hand around it and squeeze it through my fist. I don't ask anyone if they feel it, too, because I have no one I want to ask. My solitude is so impressive that it could wrap the whole world in a blanket, but instead, it wraps me in a coffin. 

The offness shifted me one micrometer back to equilibrium. I let everyone continue to be real while I dissipate. Everyone acts accordingly, everyone talks the way they normally do, but I have become a passenger in these shared conversations. I speak, but I don't direct it. I smile, but I am looking off to the side, at the cars coming down the road, at the teenagers hanging out, at the last twenty years of my life—where did they go? Where did I go? 

The stark white stadium lights taped to the roof of the theater shine bright; they stare me down like lamps in an interrogation room. It's striking and unsettling but more so odd than unsettling. Something eerily calming about it if I think about it too long, but I try not to think too long about anything. I keep my thoughts five seconds flat. Any further and I'm not sure what happens beyond that, and I don't really want to know. 

I avoid standing under the lights because I don’t want to be seen. I hide in the shadows and wait for the lights to fade away. Whenever the morning comes. Whenever the sun rises and cuts through this portal like a knife, revealing a sliver of a familiar somewhere. If the morning ever comes. If there even is a familiar somewhere left for me to get back to.

If is a liminal space.

If is a delicate draw-bridge, ready to disappear as soon as I step foot onto it. 

I don’t really know where I go from here anymore. I think this is it.

I can't remember the last twenty years of my life. That’s not an If, that’s a Fact. I can’t remember anything before this moment. Two years ago, I stopped trying to remember my life. This is what I wanted. Now I got what I wanted and now is where I am.

Now is a summer evening, late June, on the edge of Brooklyn. Cool air brushes against my revealed skin, curling around my T-shirt sleeves and swimming towards my shoulders. The cool air wants to sit on me but isn’t sure it can, isn’t sure it should. It speaks in whispers and embarrassed-for-me hushes: "She's too fragile," it concedes before leaving me alone. 

Everything leaves me alone, but I leave it first. 

I bend underneath the lights, avoiding their spotlight. I walk towards the car that isn't there yet. My body is suddenly fifty feet away from me. I keep walking towards a future that cannot be built because it has no past to go on. I'm in nowhere and I am alone with no body to show for it.

I wait on the grass. I look sparingly at the dilapidated parking lot across the street. I hold myself down and what’s left of me. If I don’t, I’ll float away. I look at my phone. An acquaintance needed my help but he fell asleep. I’m turning into a savior again and I don’t want to do that anymore. I let my mom know that I’m taking a cab so she doesn’t worry. No one else has said anything. Everyone’s disappeared, too.

I am momentarily 19 again. 

Heart-racing panic every time I see him. Think I’m a joke. Nothing ever changes. Useless. Same pattern playing out on repeat. This is my fault. Everything is too much. The heat wraps itself tight around me, I am saran-wrapped in my own misery. Why am I like this? This isn’t how life is supposed to be.

And then I’m not.

In the theater behind me, I watched a movie by myself. It was miserable and lonely. In the movie, things moved slowly and hesitantly, except for when one character punched another character out of nowhere. Except for when another character shot the main character, even though it was supposed to be a knife fight. I knew he was going to shoot him. The film didn't feel real, either. A copy of reality. Just like my life. He brought a gun to a knife fight.

In the movie, anger and violence moved quickly, unable to be restrained. Change, on the other hand, was immobile and incapacitated. I try to think about my own anger but I can’t. I can't access my anger, and violence doesn't pass through my hands like it used to. It's like the cold has numbed any heat inside my body. Blood runs cool, my heart goes still, the night stretches into infinity, and I'm still not real. But the cab will be here in three minutes. 

I was more interested in the sadness that drifted around in every character's eyes. It was if they all knew they were doomed to repeat themselves, but they would still gently try to escape their fate at least once a year. But even when they tried to change, they always returned to who they were, the reflexive rubber band snapping harsher with each attempt. Change was futile; predictability won each time. 

But I have no past now so do I go back to who I was? Or does that person not exist anymore, and therefore neither do I? I guess I’m real in all the ways I am not, and I'm not real in all the ways that you are. 
I stand on the grass. I’ve been here before, I accept that, at some point in the past. I think about it. Beyond five seconds. I see echoes of the past come into view. Traces of it start seeping in. Oh no, I don’t like that. That’s not supposed to happen. My body’s already at home. I’ll be there soon to catch up to it? 

A car drives toward me and I think it’s mine but it drives past me instead. The perimeter outside the Sheepshead Bay Regal is a liminal space and I have been stuck here for as long as I can remember.