Sojourner

And if you are not lonely under this dividing and indifferent blue, if you do not feel, even amid your moments of happiness, some absolute inwardness that is absolute otherness, then, friend, you are either preternaturally enlightened or completely unconscious.
– Christian Wiman

We visited the East Coast last week. It always feels strange to be back where we used to live, like I’m stepping inside some older version of myself that no longer exists. I’m struck by the miles of green, the verdant foliage and endless lawns so unlike the dry brown hills of California. The humidity was so oppressive it felt like some living thing driving us indoors, making me realize how seamlessly our indoor and outdoor lives blend in the Bay Area. Strangers smiled at us and were more liable to strike up conversation. We were often the only Asians in the room. Fewer people exercised; more people dressed up. There was at times a more outwardly frenetic kind of energy, a faster pace of speech. A more prescriptive approach to life, a greater emphasis on tradition.

It is impossible to sort out what of all that is geographical location versus extended family culture, just as it is impossible to sort out how much of it is and isn’t me. I lived in that place, I was that person, for the vast majority of my life—and yet while part of me recognizes it as familiar, another part now brands it as foreign. I don’t belong there anymore, yet being there reminds me how much I used to miss all those things. How much of what I prefer now is simply the result of involuntary acclimation to the place I now live? Who am I really?

Instead of feeling like I belonged on both coasts, being there made me feel like I belong in neither. I felt like a drifter, like someone searching for a country I cannot find, filled with wordless longing for some home that doesn’t exist. I was aware of an absolute inwardness that was absolute otherness.

I wonder how much of this is some extended geographical metaphor for Life After Cancer. I realize now that I had subconsciously counted on going back to regular life once the worst of the treatment was over, only to find that whatever I thought I’d return to no longer exists. On the outside, I seem to be stepping right back into everything, into chores, work, ministry, classes. People say to me, you look so normal! (um, thanks?) But on the inside, I feel like I did visiting the East Coast: this is a land I used to know, but nothing about it feels the same anymore. I feel numbed out and brittle, like I’m feeling my way through the days, a wanderer searching for home.

In his book Managing Transition, William Bridges describes the difference between change and transition. Change is situational, the new circumstances you are in. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological; it is your coming to terms with those circumstances, and it happens in three phases. It begins with letting go of the situation and ends with making a new beginning. But in the middle, at the core of transition, is this neutral zone:

The neutral zone is an in-between time, when the old is gone but the new isn’t fully operational. Williams describes it as “a kind of emotional wilderness, a time when it [isn’t] quite clear who you [are] or what [is] real.” It can be a time of creation and innovation, but it’s also typical to feel some degree of disorientation, self-doubt, or lack of motivation. The neutral zone is when when “critical psychological realignments and repatternings” take place, and Williams suggests that corporations help their employees navigate it by creating temporary support systems (such as new configurations and short-range goals), strengthening connections with others (it can be a lonely place), and being willing to try new things.

The point is: one does not simply leave the old and step into the new—in between, we wander. There are moments of discovery and joy, but there is also an inescapable degree of internal dissonance, a sense that things are not yet right. But isn’t this in some ways the human condition? Do we not all long for more than this world? Is not all of the Christian life a journey between the “already” and “not yet”? “At present we are on the outside of the world,” writes C.S. Lewis, “the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”

Someday, we shall get in. I wonder if it is possible that cancer has rendered me at once more keen on life and yet less attached to it. I value life more than ever having tread so close to losing it, yet I’ve also peered on the other side of suffering and seen how empty life can feel when one is not well, like some shell or shadow of the real thing, like it only exists to point to the other side of the door.

I woke up this morning, peered into the mirror, and found blood on my face. Sounds like something out of a horror movie, but it’s not all that unusual now to have spontaneous nose bleeds. The other day at a restaurant, someone pointed out that my elbows were bleeding—something about the infusion does that, makes my skin break apart or flake away, turns me friable. I don’t even remember bumping into anything, but there it is, evidence that I’m still clumsily navigating my way through treatment that, while not as bad as it used to be, is very much still happening. The next infusion is in three days. It comes like clockwork, this treatment that keeps me ever moored in this twilight zone, this in between space that has a reality all its own.