The Space Between Before and After
You don't have to have your future figured out to keep moving toward it. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is trust the space between who you were and who you're becoming.
"Sometimes the hardest place to live is the one where you're no longer who you were, but you haven't figured out who you're becoming."
I've been thinking a lot about the word between lately. It's a strange place to live because nothing feels settled there. You're no longer standing where you started, but you can't quite see where you're going either.
I don't think anyone talks about that part of healing.
People ask if you're doing better, and I never know how to answer. Better than the day everything fell apart? Absolutely. Better than the life I imagined before it happened? I don't think those are two things I can compare.
Maybe healing isn't a straight line because life isn't one either.
There are mornings when I wake up feeling lighter than I did the day before. I make my coffee, walk to class, laugh with friends, and almost believe this is becoming my new normal. Then something as simple as hearing an old song in a coffee shop reminds me that grief doesn't disappear just because you've learned how to carry it.
It simply waits for an invitation.
I used to think I was waiting for my life to begin again. I told myself that eventually there would be a morning when I'd wake up and feel like the version of me that existed before everything changed. I've started wondering if that woman isn't coming back.
Not because she's gone forever.
Because she wasn't meant to stay exactly as she was.
That thought frightened me the first time it crossed my mind. It felt like admitting defeat, as if becoming someone new meant I'd somehow lost the person I had spent years trying to protect. But maybe growth has never been about becoming someone different.
Maybe it's about becoming someone deeper.
There are parts of me today that didn't exist six months ago. I notice small kindnesses more than I used to. I call my parents more often. I linger a little longer when someone I love hugs me goodbye because I've learned how quickly ordinary moments can become memories.
I would have preferred to learn those lessons another way.
But they're mine now.
I think that's what living "between" really is. It's the quiet realization that you don't have to rush toward the next chapter just because this one feels unfamiliar. Sometimes the middle is where the strongest parts of us are being written, even when we can't see the story taking shape.
I'm still somewhere between who I was and who I'll become.
For the first time...
That doesn't feel like something I need to escape.
Until next Tuesday.
— S.
