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If you read my article about extroverts and minimalism (see: The Extroverted Minimalist), you probably remember me mentioning my interest in liminal spaces.

Well, now I’m gonna talk about it.

Think of this as less of a theory-focused, serious article and more of me just talking about something random that interests me.

(Plus it’s nearly Halloween again and the last time I wrote an article around Halloween it was about my antiquephobia so obviously we needed another weird, slightly unsettling article.)

I have a strange connection with liminal spaces. I think we all do, but the thing is… I used to be afraid of them. Now I find them neat and interesting, and often point them out in everyday life. The soccer park about 10 minutes from our house that feels completely disconnected from the outside world, the bathroom in our basement, a group of empty hospital buildings near our house that closed down a while back and are no longer in use… I recently told my bro while we were at the grocery store that it looks like pretty liminal in the ice cream and bread aisle.

Our local grocery store is pretty quiet most of the time, and what with the dim lights and dull vinyl tile with blue and cream-colored diamond patterns, can you blame me? It’s like being in another world… and it makes shopping all the more exciting.

Sometimes it’s very weird, suddenly realizing the thing you were afraid of no longer bothers you. It’s like, you blink, shrug, and say “Hmm! Whatever! I guess that doesn’t scare me anymore!”

It’s kind of a great feeling. 

A few years ago, I used to feel very afraid of abandoned, lonely, dilapidated places. Places with no people, just signs of once having had life. Now I just see places like that and I’m simply reminded of the pictures of “liminal spaces” I’ve seen online, and feel somewhat intrigued—in an odd, quiet sort of way—as I imagine wandering around there and perhaps maybe meeting a fellow wanderer.

There are several different types of liminal spaces—grunge, city spaces, like abandoned subway tunnels, concrete stairwells, bridges (metal or concrete or both); forest-y, overgrown spaces, like ghost towns covered in bushes and weeds and tree saplings coming up, or abandoned dirt paths overgrown with grass; clean, gated-community type spaces, like neighborhoods with well-mowed, grassy lawns. Just to name a few. There are lots more.

Some of the spaces are pleasant and sunny, others are cloudy and dark and freaky, places I would never want to visit. But there’s always this dreamlike feeling attached to all of them, like they mean something, like you’re not alone (whether that’s a comforting or discomforting thing), and like you’re just there, floating through them. And they’re all aimless and seemingly endless.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been so interested in these places. Because I can relate somehow to that endless,  aimless feeling.

My life has been feeling endlessly aimless for a while now. Like I’m in this stuck place where I’m not really going anywhere and nothing I do seems to have much of an impact (at least not yet).

Some days I feel like either I’m insane, or most everyone around me is.

Storytime

One day, I was out on a drive with my family along the back roads near where we live. The sun was setting, and it was nearly dark by the time we finished our drive. It was also late fall, nearly winter, if I remember correctly.

I was younger at the time, probably around 18 or 19, and still had a fear of and discomfort with the eerie, lonely, empty places I encountered.

Places like overgrown lawns covered with metal junk, like old rusty car parts or some unidentifiable scraps. Places like old houses with wooden paneling that had nearly all of their paint chipped off, and the porch leaning to the side, and the overall style reminding one of a place where spirits might haunt, the kind of houses that fake haunted mansions strive to imitate.

My family liked to tease me about my fear of these places that the rest of them found to be quite interesting. They didn’t know why I was so afraid.

In fact, while on our drive, they took me past such things as the dilapidated houses and overgrown lawn junkyards. My reaction was as my family expected—I verbally communicated my great discomfort and covered my eyes.

Now, you may think this cute, lil’ just-barely-exiting-teenagerhood me being scared of someone’s lawn trash and a broken-down shack.

But you must remember that I have an extremely active imagination. I don’t see an abandoned house, I see a whole world filled with only those houses and being the only human left alive. I don’t just see an overgrown lawn covered with metal trash, I see a whole world covered with metal trash and myself wandering it alone, pondering my happier, brighter past, when I had friends and family around for me to love, and to love me.

I do not fear the lonely places. I fear being alone.

Storytime 2

One day, I looked at my phone and saw there were texts on the cousin group chat. I opened it and saw a text from one cousin mentioning the backrooms. At least that’s what I remember.

Then I saw other things mentioning the backrooms—people saying someone went to the backrooms or got sent to the backrooms and the like.

So I eventually decided to look it up, and discovered liminal spaces (and also a video on YouTube featuring the crab rave meme set in the backrooms. That one was actually pretty funny).

I ended up ignoring most of the backrooms stuff due to most of it basically being a creepypasta, and instead focused on the more interesting duality of the eerily surreal, yet nostalgic—also known as dreamcore or weirdcore.

Thus this extrovert in the woods finally found a way to cope with the woods… at least, for now.

The Woods, with its abandoned shady playgrounds, where all the equipment is made of splintering wood and rusting metal, and the ground beneath is sand, gravel, or wood chips—the kind of playgrounds that have the creaky swing sets whose swings actually go pretty high.

The Woods, with its solitary trails that are slightly overgrown with grass and weeds and very dusty.

The Woods, with its random log cabins full of cobwebs but no spiders or bugs. 

It’s very quiet in the Woods, with no sounds of birds or any other animals, just the wind sometimes.

It’s a place where the only person who is there is you, yet you get the feeling that you’re not alone.

I’ll play on the playground, I’ll wander around, and I’ll imagine that there’s a way out.

Some days, I see light filtering through the trees, and I think I hear the distant warbling of birdsong.

The Comfort of the Uncanny

There’s something strangely peaceful and comforting about what we call liminal spaces. Dreamlike, surreal, eerie, otherworldly, familiar—the words that have been used over and over to describe something that somehow resonates with a lot of people, something that previously we had no way of communicating, but that we now can explain through imagery and music and aesthetics.

Wikipedia has some interesting stuff on liminal spaces if you're bored and looking for something random to study:

Wikipedia, Liminal space (aesthetic)

Or, you can try reading about nonplaces:

Wikipedia, Non-place

Why are empty playgrounds uncomfortable yet also nostalgic?

Perhaps we project an image of happier days spent playing on such a playground, remembering simpler times, when another kid was telling us to hurry up and slide, or we were chasing other random children in a glorious game of freeze tag.

The sad, forlorn appearance of such a place; this unreality, this haunting nostalgia for something that we can’t quite name… What was at one time, a happy place, is now empty and abandoned, even forgotten.

Where are the children?

The desire to walk up to it and run our hands along the bright, metal bars, climb carefully up the stairs and to the top of the slide, and then slide down again, like old times… the longing to feel that free, flying feeling on those swings again, to try to touch the sky once more.

Wind whistles in our ears. The sun is setting, and clouds are coming.

That peace. We feel it again, for the first time in a long, long while. The sense of nothingness. No fear, no stress about tomorrow’s demands—just calm. Like time is very slow, almost non-existent. Colors are vibrant.

We feel.

And yet, we do not feel.

It’s like floating.

Escape

Sometimes when life feels really terrifying, you just want to escape to a strange place, where your fears are no longer scary because somehow you’re no longer afraid. Or maybe they’re no longer scary because you’re facing them. You’ve summoned them out of the depths of your mind, out of the darkness, so they can stand before you in the light, where you can see them.

Fear. All my worst fears are standing here in front of me, yet I am still standing here in front of them. I have stopped running. I have stopped fighting. But I don’t want to just stand here forever.

I want to say something.

I do feel afraid, but I am going to simply stand here and just feel all of that fear, until it pops like a bubble, and then I am going to open my eyes again and feel peace, because ultimately, unless I allow it, fear has no power over me.

Darkness has no power over me unless I give it power.

No matter how much pain I go through, I can always choose to love.

I can choose the Light.

And the sun always rises to chase away the night.

One day I won’t be scared of the dark anymore.

Someday I will again enjoy looking out the window at night to see the stars.

That will be a good day.

Loving is much better than fearing.

Joy is much better than apathy.

Hope is much better than despair.

And I believe that better days are coming.

Tags: JustMe, AllPosts