Stop-Up

I was stuck, all alone, in my gym elevator the other day, and while it was only for a couple of minutes it was significantly terrible. I imagined myself never getting out, immobilized in some sort of ironic purgatory, where the apparatus's simple function of up and down had been halted, and I was snagged in the crosshairs or cross-wiring. There I was, unable to go about my life, just stagnating, lodged-up, cemented into a circumstance I had no business in. Gee, I thought, this scenario sounds vaguely familiar. Not vaguely, actually, resonantly familiar, so familiar it makes me want to choke, and run for the hills. Except, I don't have the comfort of the hills up ahead because I've been caught in a major snag, unable to wriggle myself out from in it. So I see the hills, but I cannot experience them just yet. It's a total tease. During these last two years of looking for a permanent job, with hopes and promises that flare up for a time, burn slowly and then die-out, the stop-up has been more than a mean case of claustrophobia, it is no-find-job-o-phobia. Like the faulty elevator caught between floors one and two, whose red alarm button was mysteriously not on duty, there is no tangible "help" button to be pushed insistently. When you're caught between jobs, you're your own best self-help button. It's lonely when no one wants to know you very much, and when no matter how much you fake the smile, it's still strained. But, eventually you get rescued. By yourself. The experience of the stop-up provides an uncanny ability to apply knowledge that is held in reserves, like survival water in a camel's hump; this ability comes rather readily and magically from some seeming fairy potion that helps you manipulate your environment, however small and narrow it may seem at the moment. The space eventually has to expand based on your powers to envision the hills just up ahead. I was rescued eventually from the elevator muck-up. It was no knight in shining armor, but a female gym employee who was nice, but didn't really understand the seriousness of events, she was only driving-by, until she herself would be stuck in the stop-up.