Purgatory

I feel bound up by words, bound up by thoughts, bound up by expectations and dreams and wishes. Nothing seems to come out just right. My sense of humor has dried up until it trickles in fits and starts, a faulty faucet that needs cleaning or oiling or serious plumbing work. Mostly it works in the car; something about driving and the comments from children in the back seat frees the flow and I laugh and retort and bubble up with brilliant blog posts. But I cannot type in the car.

And when I get home, I sit at the computer, obsessively, clicking refresh over and over on email and Twitter and my blog dashboard, and I reach for those ideas and they skip away, tantalizing, just out of reach.

I'm still caught in limbo, that in-between-time when nothing is quite certain and a pall of sadness drifts overhead like clouds covering the stars. Or perhaps, more like dust from my life's volcanic eruption that drifts into every nook and cranny. Will he file? Will he suddenly change his mind? Will I? Will a miracle happen? Will nothing happen? How long will this limbo stay, grey and grim, dimming my sight?

I say the same words time and time again, to my friends, to my family, to the Interwebs. My story grows stale. My mind does too. I fear that my faith dulls along with them.

My faith, when I listen, tells me, Wait. Wait, and in His time all will be made clear. And I know this is true, and yet that impatient child in me whines, When? How long? Give me a deadline and I can hold on!

It's the waiting that's hardest to bear, especially when I simply don't seem to be able to say or do or think anything that matters. I'm shouting into a vacuum, the sound swallowed up by nothingness. I don't even have tears any more.

Just that in-between time. Limbo. I understand now what Dante meant.