The Waiting Room

It's one of the worst places to be. You're in this empty, colorless room with four walls and a ceiling that aren't really there, except they're so tangible it's as if they actually are. And you wait and wait and wait for something to happen because it's either not time yet to proceed in certain directions or you've tried to proceed in others and they haven't worked out and you don't know how to go about trying again. And you feel discouraged from trying again. Except how can you be beaten? You're 22 years old. Are you going to be defeated that easily? You've barely made an impression on life yet and already you feel like you're not going to get anywhere. What happened to being hopeful? What happened to seeing possibilities?

Except it feels like whenever possibilities float up ahead, close enough to see them but too far to touch them, if you try to touch them, they disappear. "Not for you!" they tease as they bounce away. No, not for you.

So then what are you to do? Pick yourself up? But how? Where are you to turn next? You want to get out of this stifling, suffocating waiting room but you just don't know how. You can't stand to wait any longer! You pound on the walls and kick them and beat against them and cry out for someone to show you the way outside, because you've looked but you can't find it. And you sink down in a corner and hide your face, afraid, hiding from the idea that you could be stuck in there forever.

And all along a little voice buzzes in your ear saying, "you have the power to get out, you know." But you swat at it in frustration because you don't know how to have the power to get out. What does that mean? What are you meant to do?

You know that somehow it's your own fault you're stuck there, but you don't know how to fix it. How do you fix it?