the abyss…between endings and beginnings
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” — Emily Dickinson
So many aphorisms — tomorrow is not promised, we always think we have time, nothing lasts forever. It’s in the moments when these words come alive that we feel the full weight of their truth. When life splits into before and after — a diagnosis, an accident, a catastrophe, an ending. In those instants, time and breath seem to stop. Every detail imprints itself on us, seared into our minds by the sharp edge of reality.
It is the pause between what was and what will be. The space where we realize — there is no going back. Life has changed irrevocably.
And then it begins — the mind races, scrambling for a way out, to undo, to go back, to make it not real. A million dead-end solutions play out in our panicked thoughts — practical, fantastical — grasping at something, anything, as the ground beneath us disappears. Anger, fear, disbelief. We are caught in a maelstrom of emotions — that pit-in-the-stomach moment, when reality forces itself into our consciousness.
Regrets bombard us — every declined invitation, every sunrise we slept through, every moment we let slip by without truly living it. They all pile up — missed opportunities, unlived experiences, echoes of what could have been. Even as we mourn the memories that will never be, our mind fights to hold on, to remember — the sound of a voice, the smell of perfume, the softness of the fur beneath our hands, the way it felt to run wild in the wind.
And then come the questions — Why? Why me? Why not me? Why now? Why, why, why…
But there are no answers. And life is never the same.
The impermanence of it all. What is, what was, what might have been. We can drown in this space, clinging to the last chapter, refusing the ending, stuck forever in the already lived pages.
And yet despite the darkness we find ourselves in, something stirs — a beginning, a newness. Unlived memories trying to be born. Possibilities of things yet to be. This is where life lives — in the going on.
The light is there. A new path is ready to be forged.
The choice to move forward or remain in darkness lies with us — and only us.
It is a choice that will shape the very essence of our journey.
