Oh yeah - Antevasin!

The holidays are finally over. And so are the family gatherings that in past years has left me feeling a bit glum. But this year is different. I'm not glum....it's more like a 'contemplative state'. Like a chemist studying life in a petri dish. (Did I just compare myself to mold? tee hee)

I've always felt like I didn't quite belong. Barring the whole, 'I think differently than most of society', there is the feeling that I'm somehow 'in between'. It's like that rare occasion in rush hour traffic where you can see tons of cars behind you and tons of cars in front of you, but you seem to be in a little clear pocket where you are moving in a comfortable pace...alone. I used to hear things like "before you were born we did...." or "before you started working here we used to..." or "before we got married I wanted...". It seems I'm always either too early or too late.

During my first marriage I was a year older than my hubby which made me older than the rest of his siblings. Gatherings were a bit awkward because, although I'm the baby in my family, I was now the oldest in his. They asked for advice. I blinked wide-eyed. I couldn't relate.

And in my family gatherings I'm 12+ years younger than my siblings but 5+ years older than my nephews and nieces. In my new married family I'm 12 years younger than hubby and 8 and 16 years older than my step sons. Let's just say I'm having a wee bit of a hard time when one group talks retirement and the other talks about more children. When my daughter in law asked for advice I looked at her thinking 'we're 8 years apart, why does she call me mother in law'.

Sometimes it can be pretty darn isolating when on top of the physical divide you add in my mode of thinking, where I'm at spiritually and that I'm the only one retired at my age. 

But just as I was thinking of how lonely this can be I remembered my old Antevasin post. At how thrilled I was to discover that there was a word that described me.

Antevasin - Sanskrit for 'one who lives at the border...an in-betweener...a border-dweller who lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown.' So that's me. Traveling on my path in the clear pocket between what lies behind and before me. Maybe it's meant to be this way so that I can have a clearer view of things. One thing I know...I'm not an in-betweener here. And I'm oh-so-thankful for that.