love in liminal spaces

why it won't fulfill and why you must experience it anyways.

a liminal space is a crossing over space. it’s a space between where you’ve come from and where you’re going. an airport is a liminal space, an elevator is a liminal space, a car drive is a liminal space. it’s that space that exists between point a and point b.

as i look back at my history in romance, i’ve always been drawn to this kind of love. at first glance, i’m attracted by the excitement, spurred into action by the lack of time. but truly, i’ve just never allowed myself to be interested in a sure thing.

so give me the emotionally unavailable ones. straight girls and people from different area codes. the boyfriends too high to ever look me in the eye.

i fell in love in a liminal space once and i felt the days pass like pangs in my chest. it had been so unfair at the time, that i had to feel so deeply for something so coincidentally impermanent, but i realized in time that liminal was all it could have ever been.

so a summer holiday in a foreign country is a liminal space. you’re there for a limited amount of time, the people you encountered you may never see again, they’ll be short term encounters. and you’ll go home, you’ll resume your normal life.

the funny thing about liminal spaces is that you don’t always realize you’re trapped in one until you get out. it could be during a family vacation, the first few weeks starting at a new job, or in my case, the months counting down to college.

like the snowdrops behind my house, the love i felt bloomed prematurely and died before even the first signs of spring. i ravaged myself. by the time summer came around, i no longer recognized the reflection waiting for me in the mirror. never again, i made a silent plea. never again.

and of course, because life is first and foremost a series of lessons, it is likely you’ll find yourself experiencing liminal love more than once. you might recognize it for what it is at some point or maybe you’ll only feel the pressures of time long after the fact, but it is vital that you let yourself love and be loved, however temporary.

theres something about romances within those spaces that are imbued with so much more power. everything is felt to the highest degree because you know you’re most likely feeling it for the last time.

i like to think your heart senses the change coming before your mind and body do. and so it gives all it has, bleeding for this person until it sputters and turns gray. what your heart knows that you don’t is that soon afterwards will come rediscovery. the sun will emerge and every color will shine a little differently and your heart will run red once again.

you can’t feel everything all of the time. the emotion will run you ragged, it will kill you if you let it. and so your heart must lie dormant from time to time. this is the nature of loving and loving again after that, which is what we are intended to do every day for the rest of our lives.

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

we only understand things that have a beginning and a middle and an end because even if we zoom out as far as it’s possible to go, our life has a beginning and a middle and an end. so if something is presented as being perennial, it doesn’t speak to us because we don’t understand time in that way.

humans are not meant to conceptualize infinity. we can understand there are things of everlasting nature, sure, but most everything beyond this idea goes against the entire model of humankind. we are born, we live, we die. the human experience is a series of events leading up to our inevitable nonexistence, and we structure ourselves around this idea. we find purpose. we make bucket lists. we dream of falling in love and having families before it’s too late.

and so in a sense, liminal spaces are the most comfortable places we exist. beginning, middle, end. it’s no wonder they are paired with such intensity, it’s no wonder we find our way back to them time and time again. we are creatures of habit, after all.

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will. 
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm until I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home, 
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

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thank you so much for reading! i hope my writing resonated with you in one way or another. i’m honored to connect with you :) if you’d like to show further support, you can buy me a coffee. 

until next time, 
ib

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