i hate travelling: musings on liminality
January 10, 2025
[trigger warning for artistic depiction of gore and discussion of mental health! stay safe <3]
i wanted to share something that i posted to 32-bit cafe's discourse forums:
"i HATE travelling. i hate the transitional aspect of it. i dont like having to wait any amount of time to get from one place to another. i hate feeling disassociated from the place im visiting. i always need time to ground myself in the new place. and travelling is just uncomfortable. you have to position your body in a public place near other bodies and its always the worst on a full flight or on the city bus during rush hour.
and speaking of travelling, i was supposed to get on a flight today but got cancelled last minute because of the winter storms happening in the southern US. thank god i dont have to get a hotel or anything but it really messes me up internally when im preparing myself mentally to go somewhere and then plans change. i dont know, travelling takes a large mental toll on me. i dont know if its the depression, or anxiety, or possible adhd, or possible autism, or a mix of everything."
transitional spaces are also known as liminal spaces, which has recently become a phenomonen of sorts on the web. i don't claim to be an expert in liminality, but i feel like people are using the term wrong. when people define it, they usually say that liminal space are creepy, eerie, and uncanny. while liminal spaces certainly are those things, people fail to bring up that 'liminal' LITERALLY means transitional. i'm more interested in the transitional sense of these spaces: between what things do these spaces exist? are these spaces portals, or merely passages? if we go by pure definition, the backrooms are definitely a liminal space. they exist between realities, and contain "leftovers" from said realities. which is why they're so uncanny.
but i get it. the backrooms are an overused horror trope and everyone's had enough of them by now. but i think the real issue that people don't get, once again, is that liminality isn't about the monster hiding behind the corner or blood-thirsty creatures in the dark room. liminality is about spaces that shift realities, and that in itself is terrifying enough.
i had a dream once when i was about 16 that i wasn't real; that my body was a figment of my imagination, and it knew this, and therefore became so painful to live in. it was the most intense dream i ever had. nothing happened in it. the dream was that i did not exist in this reality and i did not know where i was, or what reality i belonged in. in those days i was disassociated out of my mind 24/7 because of an severe depressive episode that lasted more than a year. so it made sense why i dreamed what i did. i had a hard time believing i was real in my real life, so the dream made it more intense. the "leftovers" of my reality spilled into my dream. i was in a transitional state in my life back then too. the pandemic was starting, i was about to graduate high school. and i was at a standstill of trying to process a lot of childhood trauma that still affected me on a daily basis.
funnily enough, those were the days where the idea of liminal spaces were just becoming a thing in the internet's consciousness. i had discovered them, and seeing them gave me an odd sense of comfort. i drew them frequently in my sketchbooks. here's some examples:
this is only the tip of the iceberg of disturbing drawings i did while i was severely depressed and disassociated. you can find more by going to my main instagram account and scrolling down to 2020 and early 2021.
suddenly i feel like i don't need to explain myself anymore. i think the art speaks for itself.
i dont really have a point that im trying to argue for. i'm simply musing on something that i've thought of for a while. if i feel like it, i may come back and explain more about my disassociation. there's a lot more to it than that. but it's a very vulnerable thing to try to talk about. i feel i've already exposed myself enough. i think that visual art the rawest form of expression for me. can you look at my art and see into my soul? is that good enough of a conclusion for now?