Cheryl: Is Life Just Limbo?

I started college sheltered, opinionated, and judgmental. Thankfully, I met folks in the radical and progressive commuinity. So I'm still opinionated, god knows, and judgmental, of those who live in bubbles. But I became vocal and active about it. I let myself have enjoyable experience that I would have not permitted myself before. I talked to people I wouldn't have known how to talk to, about things I didn't even know were subjects before. Life became more complicated, but I felt I fit, and it was good.

Early in senior year I knew I was done. I knew how everything worked, and it wasn't invigorating anymore. When I ended the relationship I had been in since freshman year, the idea came to me by accident. Then I latched on to it and ended it hungrily. I planned my final semester carefully, with classes in yoga, poli sci, and sign language. I knew that I wouldn't want to do school again for a while, so I tried to learn about things I didn't know anything about. Since I seem to be prone to intimacy, I found a new love that is both comforting and challenging. Then graduation came, and I was ready, and I left.

Now I am at home, where I was made sheltered and often uninformed. Granted, this was my fault as much as it was the fault of my family. Despite my reservations when I first tried canvassing, I am a full-time canvasser, career-style, even. I've been trying to get my "feminist fix" from art, like Bitch, Cunt, and the L Word. I also start conversations with those around me, who don't seem to want to have these conversations. I'm getting by. But I wonder, how long will this last? 'Cause it feels like Limbo.

As in: "an intermediate place or state", and "not knowing the result or next stage of something and powerless to influence it."

When I was with my ex-boyfriend, most of the three years was spent urging him to change something. I hated his lack of planning, preparation and vague insistence that someday, somehow, we wouldn't be doing long distance anymore. I said I couldn't wait forever, and then the point came when I couldn't be with him anymore. Untangling his life from mine felt like a new kind of freedom. I should have felt guilty, but I didn't, for which I felt kind of guilty.

I didn't apply to any grad schools, or law schools (to be the next Sarah Weddington) although I am lusting over women's studies programs I could never afford. I don't even know if I want or need any more schooling, or if it is really necessary to make a difference. Since graduating, I feel vastly unqualified for all the awesome jobs I spend hours pouring through on idealist.org. Mostly I am glad that I have a work environment with a strong female boss, with advancement opportunites, at a place where I hear "social justice" and such phrases uttered in places outside my mine. But I don't know how long it is supposed to last, and I can't help feeling I'm in limbo again. I hate limbo. I like to know where I am going. Otherwise, where am I?