There's a word for what you're in currently. Maybe you've been struggling to explain it. Not the event itself, you've mastered that like it was your job. You can recount the events, the decisions, the moments that led you to the present. But this isn't that.
This is different. It's past the initial shock, but not the after yet.
These days, getting out of bed, eating something, having a conversation, it doesn't feel as heavy as it used to. Someone asks how you're doing and you can probably land somewhere around I'm alright, even if it’s a couple of seconds later. Not perfect, but better than you were. You know that much.
You're evolving. You're in what so many people call the "becoming." The in-between. The part that feels fuzzy and formless and honestly a little unglamorous. Our culture doesn't have much patience for this part, and I'll be honest, neither did I. I like outcomes. I like the after; the ending of a book or movie is always where I lean. But I've learned that rushing there costs something.
I didn't have a way to name this space until recently. I was reading and came across a concept from Japanese design philosophy: ma.
Ma (間) is negative space. The pause between two notes. The silence that gives music its meaning. In architecture, it's the empty room that makes the rest of the house breathe. It's not absence. It's not wasted time. It's the gap that makes everything on either side of it possible.
We miss the ma when we rush.
And I, your author, am a sucker for rushing. From my earliest years there was always a timeline, and I was always measuring mine against someone else's, how long a test took me versus others, how long college took me, what age I'd be when I became a mother. It was rampant. And then everything stopped, my timeline was no longer comparable not because of anything I had done, but because my facts no longer were similar to those around me.
I remember thinking once I left that courtroom and it was official, I'd be ready to date again, remarry and just rebuild, catch up to my counterparts. The legal process had taken over a year; I'd be fine, I'd be ready. Flat out lies. I thought for sure something is wrong with me. It’s taken too long.
Nothing was wrong with me. I just didn't have a word for what I was in yet.
My timeline was no longer comparable, because no one else around me had been dealt the same cards. There was no benchmark. No one to measure against. Just me, in the empty space.
If any of this sounds familiar, I'm asking you, in fact I am pleading with you, to slow down. Don't rush this. This is your ma. This is not wasted time. This is not evidence that you're broken, or behind, or doing anything wrong. It's necessary space. I can only say that because I've been sitting in my own ma for a little over a year now, and what is coming to life is unlike anything I would have ever prescribed for myself. Like this newsletter, for example, building something each week in an attempt to make others feel a little less alone in it. I never would have imagined that a year ago.
The subliminal messages we absorb about healing can be so counterintuitive. Rushing it like it's a problem to solve with a perfect timeline only robs us of what brokenness actually offers, the opportunity to rebuild differently. To form something new from the heartache.
You don't have to know what's forming. You probably won't. But you'll feel that something is.
The note always comes after the silence. The music always comes. And it means more because of the pause that came before it.
You're not lost. You're in ma. And that's not the same thing at all.