Lost and Found – The Sacred Mess of Living in the in-between

We all hit those odd life chapters where everything feels like it’s loading… but the Wi-Fi is trash. You’re in between jobs, relationships, cities, entire identities. Your friends ask how you’re doing and all you can offer is a tight smile and the phrase “figuring it out,” which is code for “please don’t ask any follow-up questions.”

I once lived in a suitcase. Not metaphorically. Literally. After university, I moved back to my mother’s house only to find that in my absence, my room had been…reassigned. Someone else’s clothes hung in the closet. The bed I once called mine was now “communal.” So, I lived out of a suitcase for an entire year. Every morning, post-shower, I’d drag that faithful rectangle across my mother’s room…I was like a magician performing the same trick: open zipper, pull out outfit, close zipper, lean suitcase back against the wall. Repeat. It was humbling, comical, and mildly depressing — depending on the day.

Then came the era of split residency — weekdays at my mother’s, weekends at my girlfriend’s. It was my first serious relationship. The kind with toothbrushes left behind and shared groceries and arguments about nothing that felt like everything. I didn’t really live anywhere. It felt like my roots were planted in the backseat of every taxi I took between the two locations. My drivers were probably my closest roommates.

And then there were the less visible liminal spaces. The internal ones. The ones where you can’t really explain what’s happening, but you feel it — like you’re suspended in mid-air. The spiritual purgatories. The kinds of jobs that your nervous system rejects like a bad transplant. I had one of those. My soul clocked out every morning at 8:00 AM, right after I clocked in. Just stepping through the glass doors triggered a full-body existential alarm. To survive, I perfected the art of strategic dissociation. I showed up — physically — but mentally? I was sipping wine on a beach somewhere, updating my resume. I became a corporate ghost: paid to appear, paid more to not feel a thing.

Here’s the thing: these moments — suitcase seasons, emotional limbos, identity vacuums — they’re unsettling. Like living in a dream that doesn’t quite qualify as a nightmare, but you still want to wake up. You keep asking, “What the hell is going on?” Followed closely by, “And when is it going to stop?”

Lately, I’ve found myself back in that uncomfortable in-between. But this time, I want to do it differently. I want to stop flailing long enough to ask, “What is life teaching me here, in this quiet, formless place?” Because here’s what I’ve realized: those fever-dream moments eventually do end. The suitcase gets unpacked. The job gets quit. The girlfriend becomes an ex, or a spouse, or a footnote. Stability returns, sometimes even sweetly. But if we rush through the weirdness — if we white-knuckle our way out of it too fast — we miss the meaning.

So here’s the takeaway: liminal spaces suck. But they’re also sacred. Floating in the fog strips us of certainty and ego and forces us to see ourselves in raw form — the version of us that exists before the titles, the labels, the address changes. If you’re in the in-between, take heart. You’re not lost. You’re in a sacred mess. A divine in-between. Take notes. Eat snacks. Stay curious. You’re just under renovation. And renovations are messy before they’re beautiful.

And sometimes, the most profound becoming happens when you’re not quite anywhere, but fully here.

Cynthia A. Murungi

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