Bardo

I'd like to say that I'm caught in the in-between, held in place by some force keeping me from moving forward or even backward, but I'm not. I'm simply in-between. There are no tethers, no shackles holding me in place, it's much more visceral than that. Everything is currently existing in a status of uncertainty, that formless space so vast and terrifying that in order to make sense of it the mind desperately tries to reason with its unperceived boundaries. 

There is a distinct comfort in the concept of an end, and to see no end or even beginning to the void permeating one's very existence is at the very least disorienting and at most existentially dismantling.

What do you do when you awake to find yourself in a boundless sea, the water as black as the night sky above so that even the horizon cannot direct your gaze. There is nothing to latch onto, no star to follow, so current to carry. Do you float on your back and patiently wait for something to change? Do you try to swim to a shore there is no certainty of even being? Do you dive into the depths of the sky above or fly down into the expanse below? 

I can feel the weight of the space forming across my chest, seeping into my bones, pulling me deeper into myself as I disintegrate. It would be preferable to dissolve into the darkness around me, for I cannot see even my own hand reaching out, grasping for a ledge that was never there. I am of this space, but I am not in this space. I only know my gaze seeking outward, and I use this as an anchor, but should I? Perhaps it would be best to allow this form to which I cling, to release into the expanse and lean into the destabilization of my very being.

Perhaps it is not that I am in the in-between, but that I am the in-between. It is not a void I find myself succumbing to, but my own sentient impermanence.