The Messy Middle

(Or, you know, Life)

---

I am in the space I most dread today: the middle. Starts and finishes are far better.

The middle is the messiest, the time when my brain least knows where to start and how to fully jump in. It’s likely why I’m writing now, a creative excuse to avoid the tasks I can’t fully see (or feel) my way through.

I’m in the middle of moving.

My home is not yet sold, but it’s on the market. There are constant showings, which means I can no longer really live in the house. Keeping it pristine for buyers is the goal now, rather than creating respite and peace.

The stuff is everywhere. Most furnishings are in a rental container, which is out of sight but not out of mind (monthly rental fees will do that). Some clothes and a few staging pieces remain in the house. The rest is split between my boyfriend’s house and my car.

I’m grateful that Zara, Briggs, and I are very much loved here, and it’s stressful because his house was the home he and his ex-wife made for their kids, in a different way than Ken and I made ours for Briggs. I’m completely welcome, but it feels impossible that it will ever honestly feel like “ours” instead of “theirs.”

That could just be mess talking, but it’s my honest mess.

It’s also far from Briggs (in the same state, but an hour and a half away). This weekend was my first time doing the down-and-up-and-back-down trip. Nothing is too much to get to my kiddo, but the weight and length of the commute is a lot.

Even when I know it’s not forever.

Friends, family, and loved ones have offered options to make this time easier — all lovely, none perfect, and no final decisions made.

The house is still not under contract, let alone sold.

Today, I want to go back to bed and wake up fully employed, healthy, cancer-free, and thriving in a space where I feel completely safe being myself, and everyone I love feels the same way when they visit, stay, or even pass through.

It’s interesting that I’m so sad about being in the middle today, but when I daydream about what could be perfect, it’s really about creating a comfortable middle for someone else.

It feels so much easier to create for others. Doing the work for myself (not by myself, but for myself) feels heavier. (I’m certain of very few things, but I'm certain that the doing of life requires others; no one ever has come, stayed, and gone on their own.)

Maybe it’s the plague of algorithms knowing my diagnosis and tendency to wade in the deep dark. Every show, movie, or series I pick to “escape” includes a cancer death or diagnosis. Worse, all the cancer characters come across as enlightened.

That part turns my stomach. I assume most writers of these characters had someone close to them diagnosed, followed along on CancerTok, or read blogs like this one to draw inspiration for their creation. But they’re missing the devastating reality anchor.

Or maybe I’m too sunk in my own to fully accept that others are just as devastating.

I dismiss them easily: it’s easier to have cancer with money. (Though maybe that just means other fears take their place.) It’s easier to have cancer when you’re not divorced, or when everyone you love lives under the same roof. (But maybe that closeness could also be overwhelming.) It’s easier to have cancer without kids. (Though maybe there’s peace in knowing a part of you will still be here after you find out what happens next.)

In any case, these characters are better dressed, more financially secure, and funnier than I am, which I find most annoying after the financially secure part.

And for the most part, they die. Usually quietly and respectfully, which is maybe the artistic way of manifesting what we yearn for: to be at peace, welcomed gently, and finally on the other side of the middle.

Fuck, all of life — all of the delicious, beautiful, nasty, repulsive, boring, overwhelming life — is the middle.

And since I am nowhere near ready for that final peace, I will keep doing whatever little or lot I can each day to figure out what comes next.

(If you have insights or certainties, all directions are welcome in the comments.)

The middle does come with days like these, too. Since the middle has this, it’s hard not to want to stay for as long as possible.