Limbo

Just to get that out of the way, no, I’m not talking about that kind of limbo. You know, back-breaking dance moves under a horizontal, lowered pole. The kind of stuff that accounts for about 76,8 % of spilled beer at parties.

I’m talking about limbo as in, a state of transition where everything seems a little surreal and out of place and weirdly slowed down. Not that I have any indication of what that’s actually like, but I always picture myself being on a Zero G flight I’ll never be able to afford, and the plane has just reached the upper end of the parable, putting everyone on board in the desired state of zero gravity where your hair starts sticking out and you can do somersaults in the air (unless you have to puke, which is fairly common). For a very short period of time, given the amount of money you pay for the experience, you are seemingly weightless and everything you know, including the most fundamental rule of physics we are usually subjected to, is coming to a halt. I imagine that time and space lose a little bit of their usual meaning in these moments.

So now that we have assessed how much I want to be floating in the air for 10,000 bucks (or not, I’d surely be one of the pukers), let’s return to real life where limbo states are actually pretty common - and free, yay! It’s just - we don’t usually enjoy them very much.

Let me give you an example many of you might be familiar with, depending on how you found this blog. In 2017, I had the somewhat bold idea to build my own tiny house and live in it full time. Part of that plan was to find a property to rent where I could put the house. When the house was done (or at least done enough) in 2018, I had yet to find a place to park it though. It wasn’t lack of grit or initiative on my side, it was simply hard. I’ll spare you the legal details and administrative challenges but for well over two years, I had a house on a trailer sitting in my parents’ driveway and I couldn’t put it anywhere, until we finally managed to obtain a building permit for my parents’ garden where it resides to this day.

In my experience, limbo states happen when a situation had a certain drive behind it, like personal action or a dynamic that’s outside of your control, just like the plane burning up a ridiculous amount of fuel to shoot vertically into the air. And then, all of a sudden, you take the drive or the dominating factor away. The plane just floats. And for at least a brief moment, you’re like ‘Oh-oh’.

I continued building my house well into 2019 but the uncertainty concerning my parking spot and living in an unfinished building with no water connection for an additional two years has since become my definition of limbo. You want things to go somewhere, but for reasons sometimes outside of your control, they just won’t. And because you can’t simply walk away from many things, whether it’s a house you built or a flight you’re on, you are stuck. You will feel uncertain about the future, maybe anxious. You feel thrown. And you will certainly question your life choices (like building a tiny house for 35,000 bucks instead of spending the money on three Zero G flights).

A lot of people would probably cite Covid times as one of their most intense limbo experiences, where some of us couldn’t even work their jobs, with no timeline when we were ever allowed to return to it. It can be intense.

Knowing a little bit about psychology (fourth-semester here), I had a gut feeling that limbo states were back on the menu for me as I slowly worked my way towards recovery from ME/CFS. As with any severe illness, particularly if it’s chronic, you eventually get to a place where in order to cope with pain and loss of function, you have to let go of any expectation on yourself, whether it’s coming from you or from someone else. You can’t live up to anything if you’re mostly stuck in a recliner chair with a sleeping mask on. Little by little, as my condition was progressing, I dropped out of regular activities, jobs and meetings with friends, until about the only expectation I had was to deal with my level of functionality in the most positive way possible. In the worst weeks, I could eat sitting upright and go to the bathroom and talk a few words with my parents, and that took up all my energy.

I’ll talk about my approach to recovery in a different post, but basically, when things slowly started to get better, I knew that I would eventually land in limbo land for a while. My most severe sick days are over. My initial belief that my illness was at least partially a strictly structural or physical disease that I didn’t have control over has been challenged. I am hopeful that I can make a full recovery with the tools I now have.

But, and this is a common experience in many different forms of recovery, this shift also comes with a feeling of displacement. I am not consumed by being sick anymore, but I am far from being well. I sometimes have enough energy to participate in parts of life again - and that builds expectations, externally and internally, that I can’t yet fulfill (and maybe never want to fulfill again?). I have no timeline for my recovery, so I can’t make any plans. I take it day by day, still reeling from my experiences just a while ago. In short, I’m still hit by the past but can’t move on to the future yet. The present feels shaky, timeless. Building trust in my body is a crucial part of my recovery but even so, you can’t help but fear relapses sometimes.

I don’t know what my life will look like when I have recovered, and I can only really start building it for good when I am recovered, so where does that put me right now?

In a place of tremendous fear, to be honest. And I know why. Imagine going through an intense phase where all your focus and energy is needed just to make it through. Like climbing a ladder on the outside of a very tall industrial building. One foot after the other, you have a certain rhythm that keeps you going. And then, suddenly, you’re on top - and you bet that the first thing you do is to look down and get scared af about what you just did. That’s okay. If you expect it to happen, it’s actually much less terrifying. I feel like one of the most important things is to acknowledge that limbo states are almost inevitable at certain stages of life and that they are not a sign that things fall apart even more - even if it feels like it.

Feeling uncertain, overwhelmed or out of place when in transition doesn’t mean you have to follow every fatalistic doomsday prediction your brain will come up with, though. It’s scary to see things change just as it’s scary to be stuck but your plane is not going to crash and you’re not going to fall from the building. It’s normal for fear to come up when it finally has a chance - when so far you were too busy to survive to even go there.

I learned from my experience with my house. Waiting, as I did back then, is not the answer because it creates tension and puts you in a passive state. One thing I definitely don’t need is more freeze responses in my nervous system. Instead, I deal with the fear through somatic tracking and other methods. Trust me, ignoring the fear as you stare down thirty feet of empty wall space is not going to make you less afraid of heights, and insulting yourself for being afraid in the first place doesn’t do the trick either. Gradual exposure can help, though, and knowing that whatever the phase, it’s not permanent.

I’ve also come to appreciate the limbo state simply for the chance to take a breath. After an intense and steep ascend, the plane is now sitting weightlessly in the air for a few moments (or you’re panting from all the ladder-climbing), and although you don’t really know what the second half of the parable will feel like (or whatever the heck you’re doing on top of an industrial building), you kinda have a feeling that it will be a hell of a ride. So why not take a moment to honor your experiences, maybe sort your shit out, face your fear, do a few dance moves - under a pole, if you must - and shout ‘Here goes nothing!’ before you continue on your journey.

Enjoy your flight, everyone. You paid a lot to be here.