Liminal Space

Liminal Space is a concept often used in Anthropology to describe the grey areas of life. The space between two things, where one ends and before the other begins. This term was originally  introduced by a well-known representative of French positive anthropology Arnold van Gennep. He describes it as a threshold, boundary, passage between two different places. 
 This is the space I find my self in now, in this passage between. At the end of an 18 year marriage, searching for life's edges to gently trace with my hands until some solid form emerges. Looking for footholds to snag a new path, a new way forward. The world has become this grey space, this in-between space, this liminal space. It is appealing to make things black and white, grey is hard. loving someone or not loving someone. Wanting someone or not wanting them. keeping something sacred or smashing the whole thing to the ground to break. In between this is never clear. This in-between space is which I am lost.

Last night I went to a party, the first for me in some while. People were dancing and drinking and smoking. I expected that I may see my partner/lover/baby's daddy/best friend of 18 years there with his new girlfriend/lover/fling standing in a dark smoky crowd, seen only from a distance. I chose to go anyway. I decided to dive into that darkness and let it all sink in. This is all still fresh, I am still wounded by the knowledge that what was, is now not. I almost wanted to see them there, to feel the pain burn, to let it sear the grey space into something more black and defined. I didn't see them. Instead, I danced with strangers, watched people much younger, go through courting rituals of drinking and flirting that seem more foreign than the rituals of animal sacrifice all around me here in this foreign land. I watched and observed and wondered if there would be an after to what feels now like only a before.

There is the before I realized that he was sharing a bed with a woman that I can only see or know  in facebook posts, learning only that she both teaches yoga and smokes. A dichotomy that in the abstract I find both respectful in its duality and pitiful in its contradiction.

There was before I ran off to Paris to cope with my new choice to throw out the person I shared all of my adult life with.  Walking bundled in heavy coats and boots borrowed and scavenged to protect my thin tropical skin. Walking arm in arm in the company and solace of the only person I new who could accept my grief as she had her own. We walked thru grief filled graveyards and wandered the halls of the Louvre witnessing the paintings that kept company with mona lisa. We ignored it all and only wept and walked.

There is before I threw him out of our house and told him that he needed to find a life for himself beyond sitting and drinking and not doing, so I could grow to love and respect him. He wept daily and pleaded for a return to our version of normal, vowing that an absence of a life purpose his only crime could be redeemed. But I punished him with dis-missle to an abandoned building in mid town that once carried a vision of reconstruction that was ours to make together. There he slept alone amid rubble in the dark, trying to piece together a life.

There was the before I spent months contemplating if love could be shared among many, if I could love her and him, if love was big enough for us all. Before the night that she sweetly invited me to sleep all three of us together in their marital bed sideways in a row like children as if nothing could happen that would cause any future damage. Him cleanly showered, eyes sparkling, her soft and sweet and sincere. I wanted to see what it was like to love the two people who had become my family, Love them both at the same time, both together, all abandon to the wind. I wanted this. I declined and instead let her wrap me in his raincoat and drive home on my motorbike in the rain. I did this not for lack of want but because I imagined the grief and anguish I would cause the man sleeping at home in my bed, our bed of 18 years.

There was the before I spent months contemplating if what I had was enough, if there could be more, if love was something beyond shared space, if it had anything in common with sparks and fireworks or if like an old red wine it was content to sit. That man sitting on my couch, sharing space with me, was he happy? Did diving into the sea of chemicals that are created when two new souls who have never met play with pheromones be worthy of some trial in life's long list of experiences? Is there any real harm in letting someone play with my pheromones from across the room? These were questions that ate at my day, and slowly unraveled me and what remained of my relationship. Was anyone responsible for this unraveling? Should I place blame? 

These questions that now seem akin to wondering if trying that first sip of whisky as a teenager might be a good idea or have some larger context in all the experiences in life. In the morning when the dark lifts you realize the whisky just made you drunk and you now have a headache. There is nothing important or meaningful to have come of it.

Before all of this there was just us, together. Together in everything. Together feeling trapped in what must be, enjoying the bland taste of comfort. Not appreciating the simple gift of a warm body that would accept you and hold you and take you every night as the cold set in. Not acknowledging that there is nothing more beautiful or important than ears over coffee that know you and and understood that your words were just theirs to hold and keep and not judge or diminish with opinions. These simple gifts became unappreciated with time and tarnished by the daily wear of life.

I am not yet to after. I am stuck. I am in this liminal space. lost in each of the things that came before. wondering if any of them can be erased. As there is no after,  I left the stable structure of before and I am still not yet to the transformed. I only take solace in the fact that this means the story is not over.