Limbo

Someone asked me yesterday "What are you plans?" I had to answer "I don't know" which is a rarity for me. I've been thinking a lot about my answer in embarrassment and disappointment of myself for not having a plan. I always have a plan, a goal or even a list of plans, but right now it seems pointless in the many scenarios before me. That saying of "everything is up in the air" feels like a definition of what I have been going through and a plan is useless as I wait on everything to fall into place. Though it seems things have been falling all around me, they haven't been falling into place, but rather in a mess I can't seem to make my way through. Just as an infant struggles to force a shape into the wrong hole of a toy, I've been in a struggle to put things in place, but there just isn't a fit or a fix. The word that is scrawled across the blackboard of my mind is "LIMBO," and I neither like the game, nor the state of mind. In an effort to further understand, I looked up the definition:

Limbo:
A region or condition of oblivion or neglect:
A state or place of confinement.

An intermediate place or state.

...which led me to another definition...

Oblivion:                                                                  

The condition of being forgotten or disregarded. 

The state of being mentally withdrawn or blank. 

And now I understand why this is the word in my mind that I cannot run from, that I can't make disappear no matter how much I try to focus on other things, turn up the noise or put my fingers in my ears and sing "La La La La La" in an effort to ignore. Even when I try the ostrich-scenario of burying my head in the sand, the reminder of "Limbo" is still there. It's in waiting for a house to sell in a terrible housing market, it's in the uncertainty of the work day, it's in relationships with people I love who would rather ignore my existence than work on restoration, a vehicle in need of yet another repair and every other challenge that everyday life throws at me. It's the culmination of all these and more that plague me in this state of limbo and oblivion as if stuck on a page in a book that cannot be turned. That page where no matter how many times you re-read the text in front of you, the words won't absorb in your mind, but instead escape their meaning and are forgotten as soon your eye passes over them. It's the weight of limbo that hit me just outside of town as I returned from a long weekend away and tempted me to make a U-turn back in escape. It's this state of limbo that has me with no plans until a few questions are answered, weights are lifted and pages are turned so I can move from this place of confinement in the unknowns to making plans again...that is my plan for now and the only one I can make.