Umbral

There’s a space between the known and the unknown, a threshold where what we’ve buried stirs beneath the surface, pressing against the thin skin of awareness. Most never linger there long. They turn away, distract, numb, convinced that what they can’t see can’t touch them. But the unseen moves us, shapes us, even when we pretend it doesn’t.

To stand in the umbral is to let your eyes adjust to the dark, to witness what has always been waiting. The memories locked behind tension in the body. The impulses that whisper before the mind drowns them out. The truths we’ve made too dangerous to name. This is where transformation begins—not in the bright, polished places, but in the shadowed edges where the self fractures, hides, and waits to be reclaimed.

We fear the dark because we think it will swallow us. But the deeper fear is that we’ll recognize ourselves in it. That we’ll see what we’ve done to survive. That we’ll realize we were never as in control as we thought. But if we stay—if we hold steady in that space—we find something sharper than fear. We find agency. The moment we stop running, we stop being hunted.

The umbral isn’t where we disappear. It’s where we begin.