"The In Between" by Kate Funderburk

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

So begins a poem I first read when I was sixteen years old, “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  It was the first day of Mr. Sasaran’s theology class my junior year in high school, on September 11, 2001.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

The subsequent events of that morning period are what is seared on the minds of anyone who remembers that day, and maybe that is why the poem has stuck with me all of these years.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I am now 41 years old.  This is a really weird sentence for me to write.  When I was a junior in high school, I figured if I even made it to this point I would be just sick.  I’d have my family, and maybe some friends, but that would be it.  Just me and my loved ones and my defective body.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

It may seem a bleak view, but it was simple.  Study, work, do all the things, do what I can until my body calls it quits, then die.  Maybe not inspiring, but certainly neat and tidy.  Of course I had hopes and dreams, but if I was being “honest” with myself, that’s the conclusion I came to.  Nowhere in there was the possibility of falling in love, getting my heart broken, experiencing wild success, experiencing wild failure, the possibility of my loved ones dying before me or new loved ones being born—you know, life.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

What I never counted on was the “in between.”  That place between giving 110% and collapsing, of neither dawn nor dusk, of that place, again, where life happens.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.  I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.  If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.  If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I’ve recently been living “in between.”  I mean, I always have (we all do, really), but I’ve been more aware of it as of late.  The first half of the year brought some real surprises.  An infected port that spread to my blood, a particularly nasty virus, a medical leave from work, and then getting laid off.  So for the first time in thirteen years, I’m job hunting. Living in between jobs, in between total sickness and total health, in between the various corners of life, has given me some room.  

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day.  And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I don’t dislike the in between.  It’s comfortable here—I have space to spread out.  I can do extra treatments.  I can take all the naps I want.  I can go back to taking ballet classes regularly, something my high school self couldn’t imagine living without.  I can do yoga.  I can act in community theater.  I can take up the bagpipes (pipesforthepeople.com).

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

I can love and be loved by my five year old niece, who is too young to pretend that anything other than the in between exists.

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.  I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

I can have a beautiful relationship with a beautiful man who is also fine with the in between.  One who doesn’t need a road map, or specific milestones met, or a schedule of When And How Things Are Supposed To Happen.  Because he understands that life, that the in between, doesn’t work that way.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.  I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

So I’ve been getting to know a new Kate.  One whose days are spent nebulizing, dancing, singing, playing bagpipes badly, and loving.  Oh, and living.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.  I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

The in between is where I’m just Kate.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

And you know, I kind of like her.