Limbo

I would have liked to think of myself as someone who’s got his life figured out. Someone who could say I knew exactly what I wanted when I was twelve and then simply, could go for it. Someone with inspiring determination leading them to getting it and by that, ending up happy. A person that I liked to think of as got it all and being whole. But that was just not me. I didn’t have it all, and I for sure wasn’t whole.

Rather, I have lived most of my life in a dichotomy. I felt like Buridan’s donkey. The hungry donkey that would find himself placed between two balls of hay of equal size and in the same distance to them. The donkey that was evaluating the situation and simply, could not decide. The donkey that in theory would be paralyzed by indecision and, as a result, would starve to death. That was me. I was that donkey and so, I starved myself, I starved myself of Life.

Two balls of hay, not knowing which one would satisfy my hunger. Two balls of hay, two options, not knowing which one to gravitate to.

One, being the person I should become, the things I should do and the other, being the person I feel to be, need to be and long to be. The evaluation process was hard, exhausting and indeed paralyzing. I know because I have lived in that state of paralysis for the bigger part of my life.

This back and forth, not really choosing one version of me fully, brought me misery. Living in that state of indecisiveness, I did not end up being happy, I ended up finding myself in a vast space of nothingness.

A limbo of some sort.
No place to go. No place to hide.

Every decision I made, every attempt at choosing one ball of hay, seemed to backfire. It kept me in a loop of sorrow, despair and pain. It seemed like a test. A test by Life itself:

Choose right, and you’ll be rewarded. Make the wrong decision and you’ll be punished.

And so I chose. But apparently I chose wrong. Every single time. And so, I got punished. Every. Single. Time.

Choices in personal relationships, in daily choices, choices when it came to professional life. The nature of the choice did not really matter much. I still kept choosing wrong.

And as years fell, one after another, it got discouraging and pointless making a decision because I knew how it was going to end. I knew I would pick wrong, and I knew I would get punished for it.

I just kept losing and Life was laughing.

It was a lot and in my mind the suffering would not stop. The burden of me, the burden of not knowing what I could or should do with my life, every part that was a reflection of my Self became unbearable. The emotional, physical and mental pain just kept growing and growing.

I truly felt the heaviness of air around me.