Crossing the Unknown Threshold

Hello, my reader friends, how old are you now?

Since we’ve found each other here, are you most likely to be in (or are approaching) your late thirties, early forties, or above?

In 2023, according to Statista, the average life expectancy for those born in more developed countries was 75 years for men and 82 years for women. On the other hand, the respective numbers for men and women born in the least developed countries were 63 and 67 years.

For ease of reference, let’s draw a midlife bubble around a decade gap between thirty-five and forty-five.

Is it this deadline decade when we usually realize that our life is going slowly toward nowhere? We start feeling disaffected and disillusioned, thinking we would go off the rails of what is known as the midlife crisis.

Midlife As a Stage of Life

My view focuses on midlife as a stage of life, not the crisis resulting from the number of birthdays we have had. It’s never about getting anxious about catching up on socially prescribed milestones for ordering major life events like going to school, getting a job, getting married, having kids, and retiring.

I relate midlife to when my life had gone unhinged and lost– most, if not all, footing in my secure social and psychological world. I was thirty-seven.

It happened in one big, swift leap; I quit my full-time job, got married, and moved to another country — essentially leaving my past identity behind. I was an architect and a project manager at the pinnacle of my career. I was busy, and important.

I left all that behind to find myself sitting at home, trying to come to terms with who I was and trying to figure out who I wanted to become next. Reinventing my new Self, learning and getting to know this person, how she functioned, and what good she could do was my main focus at the time — soul searching, if you will.

Grieving the glorious days of what I had accomplished was the hardest part. Letting go of the person I was proud to become, years of holding on to my lifelong dream of being an architect and thriving in the career, all the hard work, sweat, and tears.

Twenty years may not seem long in the lifetime of an eighty-year-old, but to me, at forty-five, that essentially spans both adolescence and early adulthood.

And a lot had happened, formed, and shaped who I am today.

Losing the sense of who we are, or who we believe we are, is like looking into the mirror and not seeing a reflection in there. Or worse, we see a stranger staring back at us.

This rabbit hole is deep and terrifying; if you have experienced it already, you will know what I mean.

Void of use, a place that feels normal when it’s occupied and busy but now is deserted with no function served. Useless piece of — .

Now, this was a crisis to me — the identity loss, as a psychological explanation of the turmoil I felt at midlife.

This phase of life usually comes with radical changes of any kind; anything from leaving a career, getting married or becoming a parent, uprooting yourself and moving abroad, a divorce, or losing your loved one (even to college and your role of a mother vanished). It’s the state of mind that normally occurs, and typically, the transition lasts several years.

It’s the lost world. A dark, scary, seemingly indefinite, and darn lonely place.

The first few years of crossing this liminality threshold had provided me with a huge margin of free time and a lot to think about.

It was a transitional period, in the midst of all the significant changes; the death and the rebirth of my Self*– in the liminal space.

Now, what exactly is this liminal space?

In a physical sense, it represents a transitional, transformative space or a threshold. It is a space without function, the in-between place where you’ve left point A but haven’t yet reached point B.

When you’re in this space, you often feel like you’re on the verge of something because of how unusual it makes you feel.

I was nervous and unsettled about this ‘off’ feeling but not quite sure why, and the only conspicuous thing was the feeling of urgency to leave.

Run.

Imagine how creepy it feels when you linger in a long, dark corridor of an empty floor late at night– alone. Maybe some abandoned mall that was once full of people but is now left with garbage, an empty lobby, stairways, escalators, and scattered past items.

Now close your eyes and imagine yourself navigating that space alone and not knowing where to head to, when you’ll be out at the end– or how.

In the next part, I will unpack what happens after arriving into the unknown before we begin the first phase of this long process of midlife liminality, by sharing snippets of my experience to reflect on the psychological impact it had on me.

Remember that this isn’t just the distress caused by seeing more lines on your face or grey hairs on your head, but it’s about the slipping away of the life that you once were so psychologically comfortable living.

Hang in there, until next time– breathe.

Thank you for spending time with me today.

This is part 1 of the “Midlife Liminality: Finding Purpose and Identity in the Midlife Transition” series, please be sure to come back here every day as this series is also a part of my 30-Day Writing Challenge 💪