The Messy Middle

I used to think I had to disappear until I had clarity again.  That I needed to wait until I had processed the emotions.  The grief.  The anger.  The fear.  That I had to learn the lesson, or make meaning of the heartbreak.  Found the silver lining in it all…

Only then could I return to the world around me.  To share my voice.

But lately, I’m wondering if the most important part of the story is actually this part.

The messy middle.  The part where life cracks open and certainty disappears.  The part where you don’t yet know what anything means.  Where you feel like you’re swirling in the depths, or being tossed around in the waves.

The last few weeks have brought a rupture I wasn’t fully prepared for.  A grief that was so deep, it felt like the ground beneath me suddenly disappeared.

And I noticed myself crash.  Not gracefully, either.  I used to fall on my face a lot as a child, and this experience felt reminiscent of those times where I was so clumsy and didn’t know how to put my hands out in front of me to brace my fall.

I spent a few days on the couch.  In the muck.  Watching shows.  Sleeping.  Scrolling.  Binge eating.  The old familiar patterns showing up in ways that I had spent years in therapy trying to release.

Part of me wanted to disappear until I felt “better.”  Until I had clarity again.  Until I could return with the wisdom of this experience neatly packaged up in a way that made sense for my story.

And yet, something deeper in me knows this is part of the story too.  Because healing is not only what happens after the breakthrough.  Sometimes the healing is learning how to stay with yourself while your heart is breaking open.  How to tend to yourself when certainty disappears.  How to remain present while grief, rage, disappointment, longing, and confusion move through your system all at once.

I think many of us were taught to abandon ourselves in moments like these.  To override.  Intellectualize.  Seek immediate answers.  To force the meaning as quickly as possible.  To grasp for certainty so we do not have to feel the vulnerability of the unknown.

But what if this space, this liminal, uncomfortable, disorienting space, is not evidence that something has gone wrong?  What if this is actually part of the initiation?  Not the instagram version that we post about afterward, but the real kind, where life strips away the illusions and asks “Can you stay present with yourself in this moment?  Can you hold yourself through the uncertainty instead of abandoning yourself the moment things become uncertain?”

I don’t have a clear ending for this story yet.  I don’t know what happens next.  And maybe that’s exactly why this feels important to share.  Because most of us only witness the transformational process once someone has already crossed the threshold.  Very few people speak honestly from the mucky middle.

I’m starting to think this is where we need each other most.  Not as perfect guides who have it all perfectly figure out, but as humans willing to say:

I am here with you.  And I am here too.