the interior that can't reach the surface
I'd felt for almost a week as if I needed to cry for some reason but the tears were somehow stopping just millimeters behind my eyes and staying there. And so on.
Context
The novel's terminal first-person Hal opens with an image of pure blocked transmission: a grief he can feel but not release, tears that stall a couple of millimeters short of the surface and just sit there, and a flat "And so on." that is itself the sound of an interior unable to get out. It is the private, bodily version of the whole theme — something real and felt inside, sealed off from any expression — the same "nothing come out" that will define the Hal the book keeps circling. [sweep · shared-ground depression-anhedonia]