Discover Top Posts Tagged with #in between

My pain was my identity.

It shaped me. Molded me. Formed me into whatever this is.

I thought my pain was all I ever was. All I ever could be.

I let the past lay the pathway for my future.

Fear made all my choices.

I don't want to live that way anymore.

But I don't know how to move on.

Who am I without this pain? Without this fear?

What am I?

I don't know anymore. I don't know if I ever did.

I'm uncomfortable in this in-between.

This desire to change and grow—smothered by fear.

Stuck in the limbo of uncertainty.

Am I strong enough to change?

Am I strong enough to grow?

I don't know.

#spilled thoughts #spilled words #healing #fear #anxiety #self reflection #identity #emotional honesty #trauma recovery #moving on #in between #uncertainty #becoming #stuck #growth

On the subject of liminal spaces.

When I was a kid, somewhere between six and nine I think, I knocked myself out falling off a (tiny) wall. I hit a rock with my head on the way down and was out for some indeterminate but likely small amount of time. Probably only seconds, if that, judging by the lack of panic around me.

The only reason I remember it is because I remember seeing something while I was out. I don’t know if you dream, as such, when you’re knocked out, or if it was some sort of hallucination, but I remember it pretty vividly. I’ve dreamed of the same place again quite a few times in the years since, but that was the first time I remember seeing it.

It was a train station. An infinite, endless train station. You know when you have island platforms between two rail lines? That, but forever. Lines and platforms running parallel to each other, over and over and over again, far past what the eye could see. You could go along the platforms forever in two directions, or over the footbridges between them forever in the other two directions.

It was underground. In some vast, infinite cave, full of a sort of warm brown light. Every so often, on some of the platforms, you could see iron spiral staircases, the same style as the footbridges, rising up towards the ceiling, though you couldn’t see where they ended.

There were trains on the lines. Every gap between platforms had an up line and a down line, one train heading one way and the other heading the other. The trains were all brown too, full of yellow light. So you could travel. You go could on foot, along the platforms or over the bridges, or you could take the trains, travel fast and long along one platform.

And it was infinite. I really need to emphasise that it was endless. There were no cavern walls. There was no visible ceiling. You could ride those trains or walk those platforms or cross those bridges forever. There was no end. That was it, that was the world. An endless series of lines and platforms stretching for eternity.

But it wasn’t empty. This was … this was a dream, something like a dream, it had that sort of nonsensical physicality you get in dreams? Where spaces don’t work quite right. The platforms weren’t empty, they had stuff on them. But the stuff was a bit nonsensical.

There was a disassembled hotel on one of them. Like, the carpets for the halls, and the bottom foot of the walls, and all the furniture in the open, unwalled spaces of the ‘rooms’? This ran for, I don’t know, a stretch of one platform before fading away so something else could pop up later on. Another platform had a vending machine arcade on it. One of them had half a laundrette. One of them had a collection of bus stop benches. There were all these little islands of … of scenery, like, pieces of places? Plopped down randomly on a train platform.

And the places had people in them. Every piece of a place had its own little community in it. All the trains had people on them. The place was full of people.

Not all of this was from that first dream/hallucination. Like I said, I’ve been back to this place a lot of times since then. I think the original vision was mostly just the platforms and the trains? My brain has been embroidering the concept a LOT while I’m asleep since then. I’ve been wandering all over this endless space at night. Because it’s, it’s not a nightmare, it’s beautiful. It’s so weird and wonderful. An endless place to explore.

You can walk the platforms, see whatever new and bizarre piece of scenery you’ll stumble across. You can climb the bridges to get a sort of an overview of the local environs, see if there’s anything interesting that catches your eye. You can ride the trains, sleep to the endless rhythm of the wheels. It is … It’s a bit riskier riding the trains, if you’ve gotten attached to any particular place, because the trains take you a long way, and there’s always the worry that you won’t know precisely how far you’d need to go back. Because it’s all … It’s all kind of the same. Always different, but all somewhat the same. You could get lost so easily.

And in some ways I think that’s the point. This place, this dream I’ve been having for years since I skulled myself on a rock as a kid, is the essence of a liminal place. It is transient. Both infinite and ephemeral. A place where you are always moving. Sure, you might stop for a time. Join one of the island communities in whatever odd fragment of a location, half a bar or a hotel or a laundrette or a bus stop, they’ve gathered in, but you’re supposed to be moving. You cross another bridge. You get on another train. You wander along the platform to the next spark of yellow light and strange shape that catches your eye. It’s a place of endless sameness and infinite variety. A place where you’re always moving, but never getting anywhere. A place that exists just to be. No purpose, no jobs, no destinations, no meaning. Just … wandering. Forever. Among the halfway things. Among the halfway people.

Liminal. The endless in-between.

I don’t think this place is anything real, like I don’t think I had a vision or anything, I don’t think I got knocked out and briefly went to purgatory or anything. I think my brain just really likes moving, the sensation of moving, and threw up a phantom infinity of that sensation when it found itself abruptly discommoded. And then liked that phantom so much that it’s spent some decades revisiting it. I always enjoy these dreams so much.

There is something soothing about the liminal sometimes. You don’t have to be any one thing or the other, you don’t have to go any particular place, you can just … exist. In between. Drift unmoored, and just see what you find.

Of course it works better in a dream world where you can’t do things like starve or freeze to death, and where islands of vending machines or half a hotel complete with beds just appears around you, no logistics required. But, you know. Liminal doesn’t have to be a horror. There’s a kind of a comfort to it. To the warmth and the transience and the anonymity. To the rhythm of the wheels, and the knowledge that whatever happens, you can just move on.

Sometimes you don’t need a destination. You just need the means to go. You know?

Anyway. I do enjoy my dreams. And it’s nice, sometimes, in the in-between.

#dreams #liminal spaces #in between #the halfway places #the halfway people #dreams of moving #night driving #trains #wandering