Is it a dream or is it the liminal zone?

The full moon at sunrise

Does time slow down in a liminal zone? I'll have been back in Florida for two weeks this Sunday, but I could have sworn it's been a month. It's been an odd period, arriving back here after the hurricanes. I've landed in another dimension, where every interaction, whether with a friend or the grocery store cashier, centers around the storms. What happened to each of us. How we're picking up the pieces. What's going well or not so well with community and government support.

Equally, I've said it before and I'll say it again: disaster breeds clarity. There is something about life being stripped to its fundamentals that gets us clear on what's most important. I think of it like a Michelangelo, a block of stone that's being chipped back, piece by piece, to reveal a figure, precisely defined, obviously having been there all along.

I'll confess: right now it's hard to think about much else but finding my next home. I'm swimming in uncertainty, and looking for flotation devices where I can grab them: the comfort of a call with a friend, a break to take in the normalcy of the other side of town, which wasn't hit badly, biking to my old neighborhood to play pickleball.

And then, there's the house-hunting. I've lost count of how many apartments, houses and condos I've visited. Two, three per day. People are being really kind: offering up what they can, waiving deposits, providing discounts. It's heartening.

But also, like Michelangelo, I know exactly what I expect to see when I carve away the excess stone, and I haven't found it yet.

I found something close to perfect yesterday. Also, I couldn't shake the feeling that it smelled musty. Panic arose: was the dreaded black mold creeping in from the downstairs unit, the one that sustained a couple feet of water?

It can be really easy in the liminal zone to fall into scarcity mindset. There is not enough. If I don't move fast, I will have nothing. I know that to be a false trap, and yet still, I must remind myself daily: There is no rush. You will find the right place. You will know it when you see it. There is a home for you out there.

At the same time, I have a business to run, and there is a real limit to the hours I can spend searching.

It's funny, this liminal zone. It feels dream-like. The days feel soft around the edges, and I move slowly, like you do in those fuzzy dreams that come when you're half-awake and half-asleep, when it feels like you can’t move your legs. That, by the way, is a liminal zone we all experience twice daily: the moment between sleep and wake. It's not odd, then, that this whole period has the same qualities.

I don't have a neat bow with which to conclude this essay. I offer it simply as a reminder, even for me, someone who makes her living helping people navigate the liminal zone, seek solid footing, and get unstuck... even for me, I can't escape the emotions and the experiences that the liminal zone bestows.

I do know, in retrospect, I won't want to have skipped them. I know everything that's happening is laying the groundwork to bring me to the new beginning I'm craving.

For now, though, I stay in a space where time has slowed down, I take one small step each day, and I appreciate the good all around me. Forgive me getting woo woo here, but I feel the universe taking care of me. I trust that soon, I'll be comfortably ensconced in a beautiful new home, and this period of liminality will feel like something I dreamt.