The Beginning Middle

What happens when past, present, and future collide in the middle of Trolley Square on Black Friday

The Christmas tree at Trolley Square has stopping power.

It is massive—twenty feet tall, maybe more—and dominates the side atrium of Trolley Square. Lights everywhere, ornaments catching the afternoon sun through the skylights in that specific way department store trees do.

We’d just walked in. Black Friday. The place was decorated and festive, smaller trees lining the hallways, cheerful music playing over the speakers. I could hear carolers somewhere in the distance.

And my body and mind went somewhere else entirely.

I’d been here before. Not last year. Not recently. Nearly a decade ago. Same day. Same store. Same Black Friday chaos. Same purpose: buying knife sets.

The spatial memory hit before my mind could process it. My body recognized this place—the layout, the light, the specific quality of sound in that atrium—and just transported me backward through time.

The Man Who Stood Here Before

I was in my twenties. Married. Buying good knives, the kind you research before purchasing. The kind built to last. But you still have to feel before you buy them. I’m kind of old-fashioned.

I was building a home in a house with ceilings that were too low. Building a life in a marriage where I was learning to make myself smaller and smaller without completely disappearing. Building something I couldn’t quite name as wrong yet, but my body knew. My shoulders knew. My jaw knew.

I was here. These hallways. This same Christmas music probably playing overhead.

And in this past? I was alone.

Not technically. I was married. But I was alone in the way that actually matters. Alone in the wanting I couldn’t speak. Alone in the truth I kept swallowing. Alone in that carefully managed life where I performed fine while my body kept score of everything I wouldn’t say.

For a moment—just a flash, but complete—I was him again. That version. Standing in this exact spot. Younger. Trying. Not knowing what was coming. Not knowing about the basement or the breaking or the countryside or the solitude that would teach me what it meant to be whole.

Just here. Buying knives. Building something I thought would last.

The feeling was so strong I could have been actually there. Time folding back on itself. Present collapsing into past.

And then I heard my name.

Called Back

“Alex? Yo. You good?”

They were looking at me. Smiling. That particular smile that means where did you go?

I came back. Present. Here. Now.

I laughed it off and smiled. “Yep. Just time traveled.”

Except I wasn’t just here. I was in multiple places at once, multiple timelines layered over each other like transparencies.

The man who stood in this store a decade ago, alone, buying knives for a kitchen in a house that was too small.

The man standing here right now, with someone, looking at knife sets for their mother.

And somewhere ahead of me, not yet visible but pulling at me with terrible gravity, the man I’m becoming. The one who has to keep choosing this. Who has to stay present and whole and available not just today but tomorrow and next month and five years from now when they casually talk about our future like it’s already decided.

All of it happening at once. All of it demanding my attention. All of it equally real.

My chest was tight with something I couldn’t name. Grief? Joy? Terror? All of them, maybe. Or something that doesn’t have a single word because it’s all three at once.

What We Were Actually Doing

We were holding knife sets. Comparing weights. Reading the descriptions on the boxes.

“What do you think about this one?” he asked.

A simple question. The kind couples ask each other when shopping. But it landed differently in my body. Like I had an opinion that mattered. Like we were making this decision together. Like this was normal.

Which it was. Except it wasn’t.

We were shopping for his mother. For family. For the kind of casual holiday ritual I never got to practice in my marriage.

We weren’t close to his family. Or mine. That wasn’t really how we operated. It was just us in that house, in that carefully constructed life where I kept making myself smaller and somehow didn’t completely disappear.

But now? Standing in Trolley Square on Black Friday, comparing knife sets for someone’s mother?

This was different.

This was something I’d wanted but didn’t know I’d been grieving. The belonging. The woven-in-ness. The specific intimacy of being someone who participates in family. Who’s integrated enough into someone’s life that you’re buying gifts for their mother on Black Friday like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world.

“This one’s better quality,” I heard myself say. “I love the richness of the wood handles. And it has a protective coating. Ooooh. I mean, now I kind of want them.” As I start to giggle.

“Wait, what was that price? Just kidding…”

Better than the set I bought a decade ago. Truly better. Sharper. Built to last longer.

We were holding it between us. Both of us looking at it. Both of us here.

Together.

Not alone. Not performing. Not carefully managing what I could show and what I had to hide.

Just together.

What My Body Was Holding

My shoulders were tight. My breathing was shallow. That animal awareness that something significant was happening and I needed to pay attention.

But attention to what? The past that kept flooding back? The present that felt almost surreal in its ordinariness? The future that terrified me with its implied continuity?

I couldn’t choose. They were all there at once.

The version of me who stood in this store alone, buying knives for a life that was ending even though I didn’t know it yet. The grief of that. The loneliness I’d learned to normalize.

The version of me standing here now. With someone. Looking at better knives. For their mother. The joy of that. The unexpected relief of being part of something instead of carefully partitioned from everything.

And the version of me I’m becoming. The one who has to keep doing this. Who has to keep choosing presence and vulnerability and openness not just in peak moments but in ordinary ones. In Black Friday shopping and planning holidays and all the sustained intimacy I’ve never actually practiced. The terror of that.

All of it in my body at once. All of it demanding to be felt. All of it equally real and equally impossible to resolve into something manageable.

And standing there, holding that knife set, I realized: maybe I’m not supposed to resolve it.

Last week I wrote about being grateful for three versions of myself—past, present, future. Three people across time, each giving what they could give.

But standing in Trolley Square, I understood something else: they’re not just people I’m grateful for. They’re all here. Right now. In this body.

This is what I’m learning to call the practice of simultaneity. Not just remembering the past while living the present. Not just anticipating the future while standing in the now. But actually experiencing all three timelines as equally real, equally present, equally demanding attention.

Maybe this is what aliveness actually looks like. Not the clean narrative of “I was broken, I healed, now I’m whole.” But this messy, layered experience of living in multiple timelines simultaneously. Of feeling grief and joy and terror in the same moment, maybe even the same breath, and not making one more real than the others.

At the Register

We were at the register, waiting to check out. Arms full of bags. The knife set boxed and ready.

And I felt something unexpected: relief.

Not just about the knife set. About all of it.

About being here. About participating in this. About being someone who gets to do Black Friday shopping for family gifts. About being part of something instead of performing proximity to it.

The comfort of that surprised me. The excitement.

I’d thought letting someone in would mean shrinking again. Making myself smaller to fit. Learning to accommodate my wanting to someone else’s capacity. Returning to that careful choreography of who I could be and what I could say.

But standing there with bags in my arms, that’s not what this felt like.

This felt like finally having room for something I’d wanted but never let myself practice. Family. Belonging. The ordinary intimacy of being woven into someone’s life enough that their mother’s Christmas gift is a shared decision.

I didn’t get this before. In my marriage. In my carefully managed life where I kept everything small enough to fit.

And I’m getting it now.

And it terrifies me and fills me and I have no idea how to hold it except to stay here. Present. In all three timelines at once. Letting them coexist without demanding they resolve into one clean story.

Walking Out

We left Trolley Square together. The Christmas tree still glowing in the atrium behind us. The knife set in the bag. The caroler’s songs echoing in the background. Their hand in mine.

I wasn’t the version of me who walked out of this store alone a decade ago. That man is gone. That marriage ended. That life dissolved.

But he’s still here somehow. Part of me. The longing he carried. The loneliness he normalized. The way he couldn’t speak what he needed. That’s still in my body somewhere, still part of what makes this present moment so weighted with significance.

I’m not him anymore. I’m this version now. The one who learned to be whole alone. Who learned what presence actually feels like. Who spent months in a basement and years in the countryside practicing aliveness until it became more than theory. Who put up an eight-foot tree and felt his chest fill with light. Who opened the door and let someone in.

And I’m also the version I’m becoming. The one who might know how to stay. Who might learn to keep choosing this kind of presence. Who might be able to receive family and belonging and sustained intimacy without my whole nervous system treating it like a threat.

All three versions. Same moment. Same body.

Past. Present. Future.

Not resolved. Not reconciled. Not choosing one timeline over the others.

Just holding all of it. Learning to be spacious enough to contain the simultaneity without demanding it simplify into something more manageable.

The Beginning Middle

I thought this series would end with arrival. With me landing somewhere. With resolution.

I thought I’d be able to say: here’s what I learned, here’s where I am now, here’s how the story wraps up.

But that’s not what’s happening.

I’m not at an ending. I’m not even at a clear middle where I can pause and assess and know what comes next.

I’m in this strange space where everything is happening at once. Where I’m grieving what ended and building what’s beginning and terrified of what’s coming—all in the same moment, sometimes the same breath.

Where the past keeps showing up not as memory but as lived presence. Where the future keeps calling not as promise but as demand. Where the present is so full I don’t know how to contain it.

And I’m learning that maybe containment isn’t the point.

Maybe aliveness isn’t about resolving the simultaneity. Maybe it’s about developing the capacity to hold it. To stand in a store and be transported backward and called forward and completely present all at once without fracturing under the weight of it.

To feel grief for what ended and joy for what’s here and terror for what’s coming without making one feeling more legitimate than the others. Without demanding they take turns instead of coexisting.

The basement taught me what presence feels like in devastation. When everything is breaking and there’s nothing to do but stay with it.

The countryside taught me what presence feels like in rebuilding. When you’re practicing aliveness while still figuring out who you are.

The star taught me what presence feels like in unexpected joy. When your chest fills with light and you let yourself have the thing you’ve wanted since childhood.

The door taught me what presence feels like when terror and choosing happen simultaneously. When you’re scared and you do it anyway.

And Trolley Square is teaching me what presence feels like when you’re living in multiple timelines at once and you don’t get to choose which one is real because they’re all real and they’re all demanding your attention and you have to find a way to hold them all without breaking.

The man who stood here a decade ago, alone, buying knives for a life that was ending.

The man standing here now, together, buying better knives, participating in family.

The man I’m still becoming, still figuring out, still choosing with every moment I stay present instead of fleeing.

All of them here. All of them real. All of them me.

In the beginning of something. In the middle of something else. In the end of something that shaped everything that came after.

Not finished. Not resolved. Not landed anywhere I can name.

Just alive. In the beginning middle. In the weird temporal space where past and present and future blur together and instead of demanding clarity, I’m learning to stay present to the complexity.

This is the last essay in this series. Not because the story is complete. Not because I’ve arrived somewhere final. Not because I have answers about how this all turns out.

But because I’ve learned what I came to learn: You don’t wait to be alive until everything resolves. You practice aliveness in the unresolved. In the messy middle. In the simultaneous experience of grief and joy and terror that refuses to organize itself into a clean narrative.

The knife set is better. The person is different. I’m not alone.

And I’m learning to hold all of it—the past that shaped me, the present I’m choosing, the future I’m building—without needing them to resolve into something simpler.

Just here. Just now. Just alive.

In the beginning middle.

In the all of it.

Exactly where I need to be.

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Someone you know might be in their own beginning middle—not broken, not healed, just alive in the messy simultaneity of it all.

Would you send this their way?

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About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

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