Betwixt and Between

 I have been meditating on liminality a lot lately.  

Liminal, from the Latin word Limin, threshold, as an adjective means 1 relating to a transitional or initial stage. 2 at a boundary or threshold (Compact Oxford English Dictionary). In Anthropology, liminality  refers to "the transitional period or phase of a rite of passage, during which the participant lacks social status or rank, remains anonymous, shows obedience and humility..."(Fact Monster).  

 I remember this vaguely from my Religious Studies major. In Primitive Cultures, the boy is taken from his mother's house, and marched into the bush, where he undergoes arduous, humiliating, and painful ritual, to emerge, reborn. He then returns to his village to take his place as an adult in the community.

 In more modern terms:  

Liminality: is the state of being neither- this-nor-that, betwixt and between, neither me nor not me, like the mythic Cynocephalus (dog-headed human).             

                                                                      -Victor Turner  

This is how I feel, neither me nor not me. It is as if I have stepped out of one life, a normal working woman's life(well, as normal as possible, considering I ran HIV positive women's support groups at a high level security women's prison)and into...what? A year of terrible pain and physical therapy, and now -terminal liminality?  

 I  don't plan to be terminally liminal, of course. I will work my way  into some other life, slowly, of course. My pain is not as terrible, just chronic, but this being neither-this-nor-that IS as bizarre as the mythic Cynocephalus(what ever that is). Still, I supposed it is not surprising that someone who has a working diagnosis of Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place, would be living in a state of Betwixt and Between.  

Blessings, Margo