Messy

I’m currently in the middle. You know, that in-between space where you’re not fully in, but you’re not fully out either. You haven’t made the decision yet, though somewhere deep down you know you need to. But a part of you is still clinging on for dear life.

You’re grieving while simultaneously allowing every emotion to move through you. The human body is a wildly capable thing. And when you begin accessing those suppressed parts, the emotions, the unsaid, the undone, even the things already done, it all comes flooding back in the middle because your body is actively reliving it.

A goddamn replay, really. It surges through your nervous system like lightning. And somehow everyone expects you to meet this with grace. Grace?! Oh, and don’t forget love… beauty, expansion.

I’m pretty sure no one actively inside the moment of rupture is going,

“Hit me again, God. I love this.”

No.

Because in that exact moment, your entire sense of self is being obliterated. The middle is messy. It’s charring. Yet somehow everyone you speak to while you’re inside it says things like:

“Isn’t it liberating?” “You’re going to learn so much.”

Here. Let me set you on fire and tell me how beautiful it feels.

There’s this moment before gratitude. Before all the fluffy, love & light and wisdom quotes. A place where pain teaches you first. The dark knowing. The parts of you terrified to be seen. This space no one really touches.

Why is that?

I think because most people don’t stay there long enough to actually feel it. Because what it’s really asking of you is terrifying... presence without certainty.

Most of us, myself included, were taught to rush toward resolution. Fix it. Numb it. Explain it. Label it. Leave it. Return to it later. Spiritualize it. And my personal favourite... make it productive.

I’ve learned a lot about how my high-functioning tendencies served me. And how they still try to. Anything but sitting inside the rawness of becoming someone new while the old version of you is still breathing beside you.

And sometimes those breaths aren’t pretty. This collision point. This mess. The space between who you were conditioned to be and who you can no longer remain. I think that’s why it feels like grief and electricity at the same time. Because the nervous system doesn’t initially distinguish transformation from danger. Both feel like rupture. Both demand surrender.

And then all the unsaid and undone parts begin surfacing because transition removes the distractions that once kept them buried. The middle strips away performance. And suddenly every suppressed feeling has room to echo. Fun, right?

To hear those thoughts looping over and over inside your head. To feel yourself becoming more honest, and somehow messier, at the exact same time.

And this part is “sacred”? Ha... This unseen place?

I suppose it is, because very few people allow themselves to be witnessed here. Not fully.

This middle has no polished narrative yet. No lesson. No redemption arc. No tidy little “I’m okay now.”

Because you’re not.

It’s truth, in its most uncontained form. Wild. Chaotic. Dramatic.

Truth before integration, before wisdom, before it lands.

And truth, before it settles, is messy.

Most people don’t share these parts because the pain hasn’t translated yet. It hasn’t transformed into wisdom people can package neatly and hand back to the world. Why? Because you’re speaking from inside the fire itself. While it’s still burning. While it’s still rearranging you. And maybe that’s what makes it so rare.

Because when you enter those depths, you meet the parts of yourself that were never allowed to exist so openly before. Rage. Anger. Need. Grief. Desire. Exhaustion. Tenderness. Hope, even. The parts that learned they had to stay hidden in order to survive. To be loved. To keep peace. To keep functioning. And when those parts finally surface, it is both devastating and relieving. Two truths existing at once.

And somewhere underneath it all, you can almost hear "Self" whisper:

“There you are. You’ve been waiting here the whole time.”

And maybe, just maybe... that’s why gratitude eventually comes after pain. Not because the burning was beautiful. But because something honest survived it.

- Messy