I Exist Between Worlds

I exist between worlds—not lost, not found, but suspended in a soft place where definitions grow tired of trying to hold me. I wake each morning with one foot in what was and the other testing what might be, and the floor beneath me is neither solid nor gone. It hums. It asks me to listen.

Between worlds is not a doorway. It is a breath held longer than comfort allows. It is the pause after a name is called and before you answer, wondering which version of yourself should turn around.

I know the languages of arrival and departure, but fluency has always escaped me. I can greet the sun like someone who belongs here, and still carry the moon in my pockets like contraband. I smile easily in rooms where laughter is expected, yet part of me stays pressed against the wall, observing how people move when they think they are safe inside their certainty.

This is the geography of in-between: a country without borders, a home without a mailbox. People ask where I’m from, and I hesitate—not because I don’t know, but because the truth takes too long. It is stitched from places I left and places that never fully let me in. It is made of accents I soften, stories I shorten, memories I keep untranslated.

Between worlds teaches you the weight of small things. A glance that lingers half a second too long. A question that sounds simple but carries an undertow. A joke you laugh at while quietly checking if it’s safe to laugh. You become excellent at reading rooms, terrible at resting in them.

There are days when this space feels like exile. Like watching life through glass that reflects your own face back at you, reminding you that you are always present and never entirely inside. On those days, belonging feels like a rumor other people inherited at birth. Something effortless. Something warm.

But there are other days—quieter, braver days—when I realize this space has given me sight. When you stand between worlds, you see seams others mistake for walls. You notice how certainty is often just fear wearing a clean shirt. You understand that identity is not a destination but a practice, something you tend like a small fire in changing weather.

I have learned to love thresholds. The moment before a train leaves. The silence after a difficult truth. The way dusk refuses to choose between light and dark. These are the hours when my heart speaks its native language.

I exist between worlds, and because of that, I carry many truths at once. I know that home can be a person, a smell, a sentence you repeat to yourself when the ground shifts. I know that roots can grow sideways, searching for water instead of depth. I know that you can be faithful to more than one story without betraying yourself.

Sometimes people tell me to choose. To settle. To decide who I am once and for all. They say it kindly, as if clarity were a gift they could hand me. I nod, because explaining would take too much air. What they don’t see is that I have chosen—again and again—to remain open. To live without sealing every door behind me.

Between worlds is where empathy learns to breathe. When you don’t fully belong anywhere, you learn how fragile belonging is everywhere. You learn to listen without preparing your defense. You learn that most people are standing on their own invisible fault lines, pretending the ground is steady.

I have loved from this place, too—carefully at first, then fiercely. Loving between worlds means knowing that nothing is guaranteed, so you show up anyway. You say the honest thing. You stay present even when permanence is uncertain. You love like someone who understands that moments are not less sacred because they might end.

There are nights when I imagine a future where the space between collapses, where I finally arrive somewhere without explaining myself. But more often, I imagine something else: a world that understands the beauty of the in-between. A world that sees bridges not as temporary solutions, but as places worth standing on.

I exist between worlds, and I am learning that this is not a weakness. It is a wide vantage point. It is the ability to hold complexity without breaking. It is the courage to say, I am still becoming, in a culture obsessed with finished answers.

If you find yourself here too—hovering, translating, carrying more than one truth—know this: the space between worlds is not empty. It is alive with perspective. It is rich with quiet strength. It is where new ways of being are born.

And maybe, just maybe, the future belongs to those of us who learned how to live there first.