#29 The liminal space: a conversation
what I feel, what I learn
Back in one of my first childhood homes, I would walk around the living room and look at a framed poster of this painting, hung in my parents’ house back when they were married. I would stare at the melting clock and the ants next to it, a fantastical landscape, a place where time was standing still forever. To me, the painting looked lonely and a little freakish, frozen in time, a desolate backdrop. Not a human in sight.
I’m fast approaching my 27th birthday - only a couple of months away now - and I’m starting to feel a little bit freaked out about it. I was impartial to turning 25, to be honest, and to turning 26. I didn’t suffer from the quarter life crisis, so I thought I’d be safe from one in the coming years. (I was wrong). The difference between two years ago and now is that it’s the first time I have a real, looking-into-the-abyss feeling: what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to do it?
Growing up, I always had a clear-cut sense of my interests, and I was often told what I was good at. Writing, reading, discussing topics at school, summarizing plot points, critiquing literature, analyzing media. I excelled at subjects that crossed (or met) at these junctions and always had an interest in stories, their power to tell us something about the world. I wanted to be part of the storytellers who outlived time, reaching through years and years as if to say, I see you. I’ve been where you’re been. I am where you are.
Part of navigating this second decade of my life had so much to do with circumstantial situations. I had ideas on what I wanted to do, and younger me had a lot of faith that I simply would do them. It’s funny how getting older has been for me. I have more tangible, concrete fears than I did when I was 18, such as not knowing the “how” rather than only having faith in the “what”. There’s a feeling of existential vertigo, looking ahead at everything before me and not quite understanding how to get from point A to point B. The inner dialogue goes something like —
“I’ve always known what I wanted to do! Now I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to go! And I should!”
Being told I had a gift for the things I loved doing was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me when I was young. I felt emboldened to pursue things I loved, and had the blessing of being approved for them. The pitfall of such a situation is that you think you’re exempt from questioning yourself too much when you think you have a gift. If you’ve always been told it’s there, it feels weird to question it too much, to think it’s eroding or that it’ll ever leave you.
And yet the second decade of my life looms ahead of me, turning a corner into the last three years of it. I admit, I’ve grown more hesitant to stand behind the gift. Time passes and its inedible quality is always reaching, somewhere here but somewhere else, too, and it makes me wonder if I really did accomplish enough, if I really have done all that I can, if I truly am as gifted as I was told I once was. I think other’s belief in me when I was a kid was the biggest break I could’ve ever caught - even when I hesitate to lean into the value of the gifts I have now - nowadays, I am trying to lean into the gift again. Think about what I could do with it, what I could help change.
It’s not exactly a coincidence that I’m finding myself in the liminal space. We’re in a full-blown climate crisis, our generation is getting older, and we’re facing outdated cultural scripts that no longer fit us or the way we want to live our lives. It does work for some of us - it simply happens that way sometimes - but for others, it’s a confusing time. When is the right way to settle down for a career path we want to stick to forever? Or when is the best moment to decide we need to date more seriously? When is the best time to go back to school, or pursue a second degree? The zeitgeist is a big “?????” and in the meantime, we’re trying to figure out how to navigate adulthood in a world that is quickly changing, economies contracting, some kind of recession approaching.
It’s a lot.
And so, while I navigate this liminal space, I have collected thoughts and ideas about the transition periods we go through as we get older (similar to my list of things to keep in mind). I find it comforting to look towards my peers, often women in their later 20s, who mainly focus on creating newsletters, writing books, making zines, an ongoing discussion of what the liminal space is and how to let yourself sit in it, befriending the uncertainty of getting older.
Things I have learned in the liminal space
Back in August, I discussed my existentialism (Especially regarding the future of my life. What did I come to this world to do? I’m overwhelmed with the weight of being here. I’m not sure what I should be doing). About all the uncomfortable thoughts I was having, Sofia calls the feeling literally the birthplace of great growth.
I told a friend of mine I was reconsidering working full-time again, settle in a company, consider the pros of being part of a team where I didn’t have to make every single decision. I wasn’t sure what to make of my changing desires. Renee reminded me that being in touch with yourself and what you want is a lifelong, ongoing process and sometimes it’s these weird little pockets of time spent alone that give you the best moments of introspection and reckoning, even the answers you’re looking for don’t come right away.
I turned to notes on shapeshifting to learn more about how she thought about our why, our point, what we’re here to do. She writes, “And maybe the eternally elusive ‘why’ is what keeps life moving. With ‘why’ always teasing us, nothing can ever truly settle into definition. Logic only solves a handful of problems, cultural convention the same. The heart even, has its own exuberant guidance, but even this force has no answer to the ultimate question. It just is, and is, and is, and is. Accidentally falling out of a secret-third-place pocket like tiny marbles tapping down an endless hall. ‘Why’ is the question that keeps the earth spinning and time unfolding before your feet. As long as ‘why’ exists, there is no genuine form of stopping in any capacity. As long as ‘why’ exists, everything in this life is suspended in a sacred open-endedness.”
I recently read Heather Havrilesky’s book, How to be a person in the world. (No, I didn’t know this book existed prior to starting this newsletter. Funny how life works, though!). One of her featured columns talks to an artist who’s in the in-between space; they move back home with their parents, they feel like a failure, they don’t know what to do. She ends the column by telling them that their art is here; their ideas are here; they will keep growing. They tell them: remember this moment. This is the moment where the rest of your life begins.
Juliet from IG chicfeast.art: “there is no stagnancy / stagnancy is an illusion”. She writes: “I now realize that all my perceived failures to push through seemingly stagnant energy previously were actually just occasions when I did not understand my cycles, consequently working against them, making myself even more tired. But now I get it, and I'm practicing going with my flow, judging it less and loving it more. / what a relief”.
“Time is spacious, so it is safe for me to take my time”
I’ve been thinking about the time that has passed between March and now. My grief has shapeshifted with the seasons changing. I first began to have a sort of latent urgency behind my decisions, what to do, how to be. But something I think about more nowadays is believing in the process of taking my time — instead of feeding the feeling that time is running out. These are very different energies: one works with an idea of allowing life to take shapes. Another tries to force life into a shape we believe is useful.
Last year, I read Conversations on Love by Natascha Lunn. She interviewed one man on his grief after losing his mom. One thing struck with me - the thought that he was willing to do more of what he truly wanted to do, with a newfound awareness of how delicate, how brief life really is. Not compromising his dreams, his loves or ambitions. Even in the liminal spaces, I imagine, it’s a way to continue living.
I’m not very certain of this liminal space in terms of size, or length, or possibility. I do know I want to reach out to myself - the girl who chose a path and believed that she could pursue it. I’m carrying her now, and I’m remembering her as often as I can. I hope she’s proud of me - I like to think she is.
