Places That Sit In-Between

On singleness, depression and liminal space.

I don’t have a single dating app on my phone. In the beginning, during moments of dopamine-seeking, I would reflexively search for Hinge, typing the letters into my phone’s search bar, only to be met with an icon of a little cloud and a downward-facing arrow. Oh, I’d think. Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. And then… a little relief—one less thing to do.

My life has become contentedly small. A Friday night holds no more significance than a Tuesday, and keeping a routine has never been easier.

I wake around 5 a.m., make coffee, exercise, shower, and then begin my working day. At some point, I walk Astrid, and then, usually around 5 p.m., I go upstairs to my sister’s house. Most evenings, I cook dinner for us all before heading back down to my flat to read or finish up work. It’s simple, dependable, rhythmic.

This can’t go on forever; I know that. This feels like a temporary place, a refuge suspended between two junctions: there was a before, and there will be an after. Right now, I am in the stillness in the in-between.

Here in Cheltenham, slotted into my sister’s family as if they are my own—which, of course, they are, but not in that way—I am sheltered from loneliness. I am coddled by their familial unit, both a part of their ecosystem and apart from it. I can retreat to my solitary space and solitary work while enjoying the spoils of their little community. It is both mine and not mine.

Perhaps this is why I’ve finally been able to discharge myself from the duty of searching for someone, an obligation that has plagued me subconsciously for as long as I can remember. Even when I was single, I was never truly single. I know this now because this is the most single I’ve ever been—in the truest sense. Not seeking, not yearning, not even really wondering—just existing. Until now, the idea of not looking for love, of being single as a destination rather than a platform between two connecting trains, felt alien to me. My neural pathways, so readily trained to seek both excitement and comfort through romance, have begun to atrophy. The drug is wearing off.

Romantic love was often where I looked for a home, for a corroborator. To be a part of a chosen pair is to be reassured of your own significance and worthiness. A partner can verify your story, nod sagely at your concerns, roll their eyes at your quirks. They can know you more intimately than anyone else because you’ve bestowed them with that honour, and they’ve done the same for you. You’ve selected each other—yes, this person, please. This is the one I’d like to walk with, through it all. It’s an intoxicating agreement, a conjured cosmos; inhabitants: two.

Sometimes, I want to text someone something insignificant—something that corresponds to a shared anecdote, something that only really works in the unique language of a romantic relationship. I could text this to my friends, I think, but the subtext is different, so I keep these things to myself now.

I do message my friends, however, a constant stream of communication that keeps me tethered to them. I try to be better at it than I was in London. January was quiet for most of them too, so I was comforted by our shared mundanity. But the physical distance means I feel their absence more acutely than when they were only a bus or a tube ride away.

The gaping hole of our face-to-face friendship presses in on my otherwise unspoiled hiatus from reality. It pinches me, asking, Are you still there?

Last weekend, I went to London and saw a few of them, vowing never again to take for granted the importance of community. I love those women so much.

Despite this, outside of the city, there are fewer distractions, and I’ve arranged it that way. It’s much easier to focus, and I need to focus—on my work, and on my mind.

Towards the end of last year, my depression became uncontainable, spilling out, spoiling things of its own volition. I’d try to collect it, stuff it back down—Not now, I’d think. And when that didn’t work, I’d try to expel it, sweat it out, which helped in bursts, but my melancholy was overly productive, re-generative. I tried to ignore it, not feed it, not talk about it. My mind became a swamp: dark, uninviting, inhospitable. I felt helpless and hopeless, trapped by my own despondency.

When I made the decision to move, I worried I might feel arrested by this separation from my old life, that it might worsen the problem, that it was symptomatic of my failings. And yet, once I made peace with it, my misery started to wane.

I spent a few days either side of New Year’s Eve with friends in The Scottish Highlands, and it was there that the clouds really started to lift. This was my final stop before the move. The vast landscape is so immense and awe-inspiring that it’s impossible not to feel small, to not be pulled out of the solipsism of depression—the insignificant cage of your mind’s own making. I arrived in Cheltenham with a buoyancy I’d forgotten I could muster.

It turns out, the act of physically detaching myself, in more ways than one, has provided me with a much-needed acceptance of liminal space. Opting out, standing still — even as it feels like everyone is rushing past you — can be freeing. Perhaps we never arrive. Maybe the only true peace comes from accepting that you cannot control the outcome; that when you let go, let yourself fall through the gaps, the in-between places might be exactly what you need—for now.