i think i am between versions of myself, and neither one knows what to do with me. one version of me is still holding onto what almost was. the other is trying to move forward without knowing where forward is. they don’t speak to each other, and i’m stuck translating between them.

i want to be known. i don’t want to be perceived. i want solitude. i don’t want to be alone. i want to be close. i step back. find me. i don’t want to be found. hear me. i don’t want to be heard. i want to live. i’m scared of life.

i am at a pause mid-sentence, time keeps moving, but i can’t. i keep trying to move forward but i don’t know what i’m moving towards. nothing is finished. not even the waiting

it doesn’t feel like a phase. it feels like a state of being. like i’m not in between, i’m in it. like i’m not waiting for something to happen, i’m already living in the waiting. in limbo.

i move through my days with a strange sense of detachment. i do the things i’m supposed to do. i show up. i speak when spoken to. but there’s a part of me that feels slightly delayed, like i’m always arriving a few seconds after myself. i hear my own voice and it doesn’t quite sound like it belongs to me.

there are moments when i almost forget about it. moments where i laugh too hard, or get distracted, or feel briefly present in my own body. but even then, it’s there in the background, like a hum i’ve learned to live with. it never fully goes away.

i don’t know how to place myself in the language people use to make sense of life. i’m not falling apart. i’m not putting myself back together. i exist in the overlap, where nothing is finished and nothing has fully begun.

i move through the world with a strange awareness of myself. i notice the way i’m perceived, the way i soften or sharpen depending on who i’m with. sometimes it feels like i’m performing a version of myself that i haven’t fully agreed to be. other times it feels like i’m watching myself from a distance, slightly removed from my own life.

i keep thinking i should pick a side. i should choose who i am and stop being stuck in the middle. but the truth is, i’m not sure either version of me is worth choosing yet. and i don’t want to rush myself into becoming someone i’m not ready to be.

it’s not that i’m scared of change. it’s that i’m tired of being the kind of person who has to start over every time something doesn’t fit. i’m tired of the feeling that i’m always editing myself, always adjusting for the next version. sometimes i just want to be allowed to be unfinished.

and the weird part is that neither version of me is wrong. they both make sense in their own way. the version that clings to the past isn’t just holding on for no reason. she’s holding on because she’s scared of what comes after. and the version that wants to move forward isn’t just ambitious. she’s trying to survive. she’s trying to prove that she can still choose.

so i stay in the middle. not because i’m indecisive, but because i’m trying to protect myself from choosing the wrong thing. because i don’t want to look back and realise i left a part of me behind.

there’s comfort in staying undefined. as long as nothing is finished, nothing can be wrong. as long as i don’t name what i want, i don’t have to face the possibility of wanting the wrong thing. limbo offers a kind of protection, even as it quietly asks for everything else.

it’s the one thing that never leaves me; this sense of being mid-thought, mid-breath, mid-becoming. i’m not lost. i’m not found.

and after it all, i am free.