That time I realized what this book was supposed to teach me

I named this book Limbo, as you can, I'm wildly guessing, tell from the cover. Before I started writing it, ideas filled my brain for different chapters, concepts, and experiences I would explore. For a year I was set on the title, telling others that, as humans in our twenties on the verge of the rest of our lives, we were in "Limbo." We were figuring out what our lives would look like and waiting to reach the next step. 

I was wrong. 

I told different people in my life I was writing this book for months. My idea was so solid — people agreed.

I told them I was writing it, but I wasn't. 

I wasn't writing it because I knew it had to end — somehow, someway. 

I wasn't writing it because I knew it had to end with me "finding myself" after my years of searching. It had to end with me getting out of Limbo and on to the next chapter of my life. 

But I didn't know what that chapter looked like, what it was, or how I was ever going to get there.

After getting my job in Boston, I thought, "this is the ending I've been looking for. This is when everything is going to make sense."

But the truth is, when I got to there, I was still the same person. The same person with the same struggles, the same thoughts — the same fears. 

The first few weeks of my new journey, I thought I had made a mistake. 

I cried, thinking my greatest fear of not finding the happiness I had searched for for so long in my hopes and dreams had come true. I feared that, even though I had made it to where I wanted to be, I still wasn't there. 

But the thing is, I was never going to be there. 

Because I wouldn't allow myself to arrive. 

I wouldn't let myself out of Limbo.

I thought I wasn't ready. I thought I had moved too early, that I still had so many things to work on on myself and my life. 

One day, as my inner enemies told me these things, as they told me that I was in "transition" mode in my life, that I wasn't ready but I would be one day, that I wasn't there yet but I would be one day — I finally realized that none of this was true. 

The universe, throughout the entirety of my life, has brought me exactly what I need, exactly when I need it. 

For better, for worse — for everything in between. 

It brought me writing when I developed anxiety. It brought me to my lowest low when it could tell I wasn't going to deal with my relationship with food, body, and self without going there first. It brought me friends, acquaintances, laughter, hardship. 

It brought me this book, so that I could learn this lesson, right here.

It brought me everything I've ever needed, right when I needed it. 

And somewhere, along the way, I lost my trust in it. 

I lost my trust that it had my back, that it it had me right where I needed to be. 

What I realized that day, was that the universe hadn't brought me to Boston because I wasn't ready. 

It brought me because I was. 

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For so long, I thought I was in Limbo — in between seasons of life. 

Being in Limbo justified my need to live in the future whilst ignoring the present. It justified my need to loathe the person I was today and love the painting of the person I would be tomorrow. 

Being in Limbo told me I wasn't ready, that I wasn't where I wanted to be just yet. That if I just attained one more thing, one more goal — then I would be happy. 

Then I would deserve to be happy.

Being in Limbo told me that being in my 20s, learning how to balance adulthood and the growing pains of life, and experiencing all of the wonderful, confusing, hard, and exhilarating things I was experiencing didn't matter — because I wasn't in a phase of life, I was waiting for one. 

Being in Limbo told me that one day I would be living my life, just not today, not right now. 

Being in Limbo told me, every day, that it was real. It told me it was my truth. It told me it was where I was.

This book taught me that Limbo lied. It lied to me about it's presence, it's power, it's ideals. 

It lied. 

Because for so long, I thought I was in Limbo — in between seasons of life. 

And what I realize now, is that I was never there.

Limbo was never, ever, truly there. 

Because what Limbo forgot to tell me, is that Limbo, well, "Limbo" doesn't exist.