Eden James

Portland, Oregon

untethered

“and now I may forever exist between states of real and unreal,

was and never was.” - July 2019, two weeks before hospitalization

It ached, and in the absence of a beginning or an end, an entry or an exit, it crawled throughout every corner of my body, carving away flesh and emptying out spirit. And to this day there are feelings that remain too vast to carry and states of being that remain too thin to grasp. There are moments that remain disembodied, forever at arms length, and others that remain deeply burrowed in my stomach, soon to become indistinguishable from self.

untethered is a story of aching. It is an exploration of the space between reality and consciousness, the rift within which I have often found myself drowning. It is an embrace of all that remains disembodied and a rejection of that which burrows. It is a depiction of the state of being that falls between real and unreal, was and never was.

I never found an end or an exit, only a between and beyond. There is a space that feels kindred to the silence after one breath and before another; a moment of release and expansion.