On In-betweeness

I start my post this week not really knowing where it will go, but with an awareness of four interconnected concepts that have been weighing heavily on me this week, this the week of anniversaries, this the week of loss. The first is limits, the second is modelling, the third is the uncanny (and unheimlich) and the fourth- the title of this post- the inbetween (the liminal but not quite).

Anniversaries of grief are difficult. Many blog post this week emphasized how important it is to be kind to ourselves and to be kind to our students because this week is the one year anniversary of all this (gestures wildly). A year ago yesterday I came home and I have literally not left my house more than a dozen times this whole year. The majority have been to the dentist and endodontist, the rest random trips to pick up tangible books at the library, or needed medicine, or this week...well this week.

This return, this circling back, is hard. It is difficult because years are supposed to be markers of difference. But what happens when there is no difference? But what happens when there is too much difference? The world is literally living in a state of inbetweeness. Academics teach knowing that the next semester is almost here and new decisions need to be made on what pedagogy will look like. When we feel that we are at our literal limit, we keep going, demonstrating that what we thought was a limit wasn't really the limit at all. Inbetweeness. This pandemic (said in a way that acknowledges that I am referring to the one we are in now, acknowledging the ones that came before, and the ones still to come) has shown us that we have no idea of our limits. In fact, as humans we notoriously suck at limits. Or at least at vocalizing those limits. Or maybe I am the one who sucks at limits. 

But I don't necessarily want to suck at limits. I want to model good behaviour. I want to model health. I want to model acknowledging spaces and the little and large things we do to care for ourselves and others. I think I simultaneously modelled wellness practices this week and in fact set a really crappy example. But grief and trauma causes us to do things that we probably in retrospect would not do otherwise.

I held class on Thursday evening at 6-8pm as I normally do this week. And one of the things that I said in class (in a moment of vulnerability that I know I have privilege to have due to my positionality) is that I was trying to drink a lot of water today, which I normally don't because I hate water, because I had been crying a lot today and hydration is important. One of my students thanked me for modelling wellness. They thanked me for drinking water, they thanked me for holding space and class for them in a time where there is not a lot of space for anyone to be in community, despite my grief. I modelled wellness with water, but I held class and pushed down my grief. Inbetweeness. I modelled the importance of accessibility in giving a paper on access and accessibility in remote teaching and learning at NeMLA yesterday, but I also did while not having eaten all day because my appetite was gone. Inbetweeness. 

There is something really uncanny in this inbetweeness. Unsettling and magical. Unheimlich. Unhomely. This week as unheimlich. We are at home and yet not at home in our homes. And for some the thing that made us be at home is now gone. People as home. Pets as home. 

It is 4pm on Sunday and I don't know what to do with my inbetweeness. One of my favourite scenes from The Hours is actually Richard's death scene. It is a scene of inbetweeness, of love, of loss. (CW for description of illness and death)

Richard: I don't think I can make it to the party, Clarissa.
Clarissa: You don't have to go to the party, you don't have to go to the ceremony, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You can do as you like.
Richard: But I still have to face the hours, don't I? I mean, the hours after the party, and the hours after that...
Clarissa: You do have good days still. You know you do.
Richard: Not really. I mean, it's kind of you to say so, but it's not really true.

Clarissa: Are they here?

Richard: Who?

Clarissa: The voices

Richard: Oh the voices are always here.

Clarissa: And it's the voices that you're hearing now, isn't it?

Richard: No, no, no, no. Mrs. Dalloway, it's you. I've stayed alive for you, but now you have to let me go.

So here I am like Richard, facing the hours, the inbetweeness, the waiting for the next thing. The next thing that will keep my mind occupied. Waiting for my monograph that the publisher forgot to send to me even though I am the author and that it has been out for more than a month and a half. A monograph with acknowledgements. A monograph as limit. A monograph as marker of time, of era. Here I am in the inbetween waiting for the next thing that will not make me cry. Inbetween waves of grief. It is a very difficult space to be. To all of you working through the inbetween right now, know that I see you, know that I get it. Maybe we will get through it together.

This blog post is in honour of my sweet Mo, true and faithful companion for 15.5 years, that I lost Thursday morning. My home and the marker of eras and hours. My Richard Brown who stayed alive for me. I still don't know how I will get past the inbetween without him.