Waiting Rooms

Oh, the liminality of it all…

I happened upon this bodacious word several years ago. It means simply, the space between. So fundamental, and yet profoundly, provocatively comprehensive.

There is the space between biopsy and diagnosis, between engaged and married, thought and action. There is the space between jobs, spouses, children and siblings.

The spaces often exist in multiple realities and contexts from time and place to physical to emotional.

They can be extremely clear-cut.

As in the space between parking places, teeth and a return e-mail. Starting and finishing a marathon. Or, that pivotal, critical space between batter going in and brownies coming out.

But they can also be impossibly murky.

Those situations wherein you know you’ve left one space but haven’t yet figured out how to enter the next. It’s that difficult unknown territory where Point A is in the rearview but there is actually not even a Point B on the horizon.

In fact, there’s no clear sign Point B even exists.

I left the emotional stability and double-income safety of my first marriage because my soul could no longer breathe.

I had made my inner self so small to fit into who I thought I wanted to be, who my then-partner had signed on to be with– I had become completely claustrophobic inside my life.

Sometimes we need to molt.

Sometimes we outgrow our old selves. And we cannot survive inside skin so constricting. Like a snake. Like a bird. Like a spirit– we need to break free.

So peaceably, I left.

But I had no idea where I was going or if I’d ever arrive at the unimaginably spacious and intimate love I now have.

I think we outgrow places too.

Or rather we outgrow that particular latitude of ourselves.

The wonderful thing is that like hermit crabs we are able to move in and out of each other’s homes depending on what our soul seeks at any given time.

Chicago, for me, was gracious, friendly, approachable and then it felt stifling. Manhattan was energizing; then felt too intense.

Obviously the cities maintain their multi-dimensional selves.

But the soil, which enables us to grow, can change. And leaving one place without knowing exactly what the next place will can be deeply overwhelming.

Some leaps of faith span rather large chasms.