The In-between: The Joint (An Anniversary Edition)

The older I get, the more I keep feeling like someone is messing with my calendar. I’ll be cruising along in January, for example, and then all of a sudden I look up and it is May. What the heck happened to February, March and April, I wonder? I know I have a tendency to overpack my schedule, but this is getting ridiculous! The fact that I already have things planned for both Christmas and New Years this year feels a bit excessive, but then when I try to get together with friends and family, I find that many of them are in a similar situation.

I was surprised by this rapid passage of time once again when I opened up my Twitter feed this past Tuesday morning. In addition to watching a little porn, looking at a few adorable cat and dog pictures, reading the latest sex research, and weighing in on the need to decriminalize sex work, I came across a note from Twitter congratulating me on my one year anniversary. I knew that it had been a while, but still, the reality of time’s passage was shocking. And because I had started my profile just prior to publishing the inaugural piece in this column, I quickly realized that it also meant I was coming up on the one year anniversary of The In-between, too. 

In order to commemorate this milestone, I have decided to pause for a moment this week to reflect upon the evolution of the column and how it has affected my life. When I first started out last year I had only a vague idea that I would write about my experiences being biracial and bisexual. Today, however, now one year later, I realize that this column has been about so much more than just that.

Rather than focusing on how different I feel living a life in the in-between and the various experiences that have made me unique, I have instead increasingly looked to this middle space as an invaluable point of connection. In doing so, I realize just how strongly my current project has embodied a passage in The Practice of Diaspora (2004) in which its author Brent Hayes Edwards likens difference to a skeletal joint, describing it as “both the point of separation (the forearm from the upper arm, for example), and the point of linkage” (15).

Without this separation, Edwards rightly argues that there would be no opportunity for mobility, and even though maintaining connections across such separation is often difficult, it is not only productive but necessary. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that I have also wound up focusing my writings here on the value and benefits of existing in that exact same space, in an effort to draw out the various ways that our differences can bring us together. 

Initially, the most prominent connections The In-between began to animate for me were those within myself. Many of the earliest essays I wrote were heavily focused on the feelings of non-belonging and uncertainty that I had been grappling with since childhood, all of which ultimately circled back to answering that one, most burning question: Who am I? In “Awakenings”, for example, I wrote about my struggle to understand my race and sexuality growing up, and in “A Meditation on Passing” I continued this exploration by considering how the process of understanding myself changed as I became an adult. In “Home Away from Home (Another Take On Passing)” I took this examination in an entirely different direction by considering both the positive and negative aspects of in-betweenness that I experience when traveling abroad, while in “#Slut” I focused instead on how my body and sexuality influenced my sexual development.

I also connected with myself through The In-between by using it as a space to sort through more recent life events. In “Relationship Status,” for example, I used the column as an opportunity to evaluate my feelings about polyamory in light of a recent break-up. In “Daddy Issues,” I focused instead on unpacking the complex web of emotions I continue to carry around with me regarding my father and our relationship. “Coming Out with Alzheimer’s” gave me the opportunity to figure out how I felt about discussing my sexuality with my grandfather (or more accurately, why I had not), and “A World Without You” helped me process my emotions surrounding my recent loss of someone special. In all cases, the very process of writing these pieces helped me to better understand myself, by allowing (and perhaps sometimes even forcing) me to confront the complexities of all these various life experiences.

In addition to fostering this process of connecting with myself, The In-between has also served as a productive space to enrich my connections with others. Most notably, this column has provided a platform for connection with my mother, who, as I detailed extensively in “Dear Mom”, reads and then discusses with me every single essay I have written. Similarly, my brother and a handful of friends have also said that they too learned something new about me from my column, and just as with my mother, these new insights have often led to more honest and empathetic discussions that ultimately help us to both better understand each other. Of course, as I wrote in “The Search for Belonging”, The In-between also provides an invaluable opportunity for me to connect with you, the reader, which is an experience I celebrate every time I receive a note from someone telling me how a personal experience I wrote about resonated with them.

This last illustration of connection is perhaps the most important to me, as it underscores the potential power of the in-between as a metaphorical meeting place to unite two strangers across their difference. Initially, when I first began writing this column I felt isolated and alone, not simply because of my physical separations (living with grandpa in a city where I didn’t really know anyone and trying to figure out what the heck I wanted to do with my life), but because I also felt like there was no way in the world anyone could ever really understand me. 

I was so focused on what made me different from everyone else that I didn’t recognize the ways that I am also the same, nor how the very experience of difference itself can serve as a unifying factor. However, over the past twelve months, I have come to realize that difference is universal, and that my experiences of in-betweenness will, at least in some way, resonate with most others. In this way, I have come to view residing in this middle space as an essential part of my personal development, as well as of the ongoing healthy development of society as a whole.