Something I can only feel

Autumn Rhythm by Jackson Pollock

There's a place I’ve been going to quite a lot lately. I did not like that place. When I am in that place, I seem to lose all sense of direction; I'm just there and confused. In that place nothing makes sense, and when I’m there I lose all my vocabulary, and I fail to label any of my feelings. You’re probably wondering what that place is. That place is called ‘in between’.

I used to feel that the place was blurry, I just wanted to get out of it; either back to where I was or forward to where I wanted to be. I felt stuck, unable to move back, or move on. I felt that way because of ‘the curse of uncertainty’. When you’re in between you’re cursed with the prohibition of using labels, and one fails to use them no matter how hard he or she tried. In fact the more you try the more confusion you’ll end up with. You cannot label or make sense of anything when you’re in between. That is very problematic as it extremely contradicts our humanistic instinct of constantly producing thoughts, having opinions, making sense of whatever we experience, and trying to find meaning and purpose in whatever we encounter. In the real world, whatever we feel we put into words; we recognize the feelings, sad, happy, excited, worried, or whatever it may be. But when you’re in between, you don’t recognize anything. It puts you out of your comfort zone. As we usually prefer what is familiar; in between, might not be so appealing at first. Nothing there makes sense, everything just is. 

Just like the Pollock painting; tangled, unclear, mushy, vague, so meaningless but so meaningful at the same time, I hated being in between. But now I am starting to realize that what I thought was ‘the curse of uncertainty’ is actually a blessing, a gift of hope.

I started noticing that my feelings were never as chaotically clear to me, and that what I was rejecting was not the confusion surrounding my emotions, but the emotion itself. I allowed myself to feel the confusion because I was scared of feeling what was underneath it because it was unfamiliar and new. I couldn’t identify it so I automatically tried to get rid of it. No matter how hard I tried to rid myself of it it kept coming back to me. And every night I found myself in that unfamiliar place again wondering what this is and why I am there. Every night I also noticed a lingering warmth, wrapped inside the uncertainty and the confusion. I decided to unwrap it, take a leap of faith and open it up, and explore it.

Once I did that, once I allowed myself to feel without thinking. I didn't feel the need to understand it. It was so much bigger than something I can put into words. Once I accepted it, the warmth spread throughout every part of me. Embracing me as strongly as the confusion had once embraced it.

That shadowy dark place, the in between, soon became the place I love the most. The uncertainty became my comfort zone. In it I saw potential, possibilities, and endless array of hope and prosperity. A gush of pure emotion that needed no words to make sense, and as a matter of fact did not need to make sense at all; for it was perfect as it is.  

We will all be there at one point in our lives, in between a job application and hearing back, in between pregnancy and being a parent, in between breaking up and moving on, in between falling in love and whatever comes next, in between any two critical points in our lives. Many can miss the miraculous fleeting joy of that bridge we will all walk through, probably many, many times. But once you stop, and realize you are in the land of in between, you allow yourself to feel, to love, to heal in ways you would have never thought possible. 

 In that place, and only in that place, do you get to give your mind a break, and let your heart feel. And what the heart feels is very undermined when put into words. If you allow yourself to feel when you are there, your heart will explode with life, replenishing all that you are, giving you a breath of fresh life, feeding your soul with what your mind will never be able to. Making you alive all over again.

Jackson Pollock’s paintings are a mystery to many. He described his style of drip painting by saying “I want to express my feelings not illustrate them.” He usually paints on large canvases on the floor, saying that this way he would be as close as possible to the painting, and he would lose himself in it. Who knows, maybe that was his own personal in between, the moment between the blank canvas and the one covered with emotion.

Autumn rhythm whispers something I can’t label, something I can only feel.