In Transition
It is always 3 a.m.
Not literally, perhaps, but in feeling — that hour when the world is hushed, the body unsure, and the soul a little translucent.
It’s always 3 a.m. — the sacred hour of thinkers, fathers, doubters, and those who feel too much to sleep. The hour when your thoughts weigh more than your luggage, and your heart rehearses every risk before dawn has the decency to arrive.
The suitcase is half packed. The toothbrush waits beside it like a mute witness. The cat watches me from the doorway, suspicious and still. She knows something is shifting. Animals always do.
And I stand in the middle of it — not home, not yet gone. Just... here. In the strange geography of transition.
There is a kind of nausea that arrives before a journey. Not quite illness, not quite fear. A weakness in the stomach. A flutter. A question: Can I do this again? Will I be lucky? Will I choose well, speak well, move well? Will I return the same? Changed? What will be different this time, and why?
Everything familiar begins to look foreign. The apartment, usually an extension of myself, suddenly feels like a stage set. The walls seem thinner. The air feels borrowed. I walk through the rooms and feel like a guest in a life I’ve lived for years.
The cat senses it too. She lingers more than usual, her eyes tracing my every move. I’ve made arrangements — someone will come, someone I trust, every day. She will not be alone. And yet, I feel that familiar ache, that quiet betrayal I cannot explain to her. The silence of a creature who cannot ask why.
It’s a moment of absolute in-betweenness — no longer rooted, not yet in motion. A psychological hallway. And in that space, doubt arrives.
Not loud. Just precise.
Why are you doing this? Again? What are you looking for? Who are you trying to prove something to?
There is also my daughter.
Can I protect her while we travel? Will she be safe, seen, held? This world is beautiful, yes — but it is also strange, and full of corners. I check the bags again. I review the plans. I worry like a father is supposed to.
And yet, deep down, I know I do not go only for myself.
I go because she is watching. I go because she is growing. I go because a child learns not just from words, but from motion — from exposure, from witnessing the shape of their parent’s courage.
We go so she sees more than what is safe. We go so she breathes other air, hears other sounds, tastes new days. We go to open a window that routine keeps shut.
I’ve never trusted certainty at the beginning of a trip. Those who move with clean schedules and neat emotions — I find them admirable, but perhaps lacking something essential. For me, departure is always a small undoing. A quiet death of the known.
Yet still I go.
Because this unease is not the enemy. It is the price of movement, of change, of being truly alive.
To stay is to remain coherent. To leave is to risk becoming multiple. And I have always suspected that truth lives in the fracture.
So I sit in this hour of transition, unsure, unsteady, still tethered to the cat’s gaze and the warmth of the bed I’ll soon abandon. I sip water. I fold a shirt. I touch the ticket one more time.
And then, without knowing why or how —
I go.