Doing the "Limbo Rock" is a bit fun and a bit terrorizing. When you can maneuver your way under the stick and show off your ability to be the most bendable of the bunch, it's great fun. When you're the uncoordinated and inflexible kid with really tall parents, it ends in embarrassment and possibly a broken wrist.
I was lucky enough to be the short and bendable type back when doing the limbo really meant something at fourth grade birthday parties. It felt glorious to adapt to each new stick-y circumstance with such ease.
I continued to maneuver my way under life's most memorable limbo sticks with adaptivity. I entered kindergarten with little more than my purple Beauty and the Beast backpack, matching vinyl lunchbox, and a small fear of "Teacher." I had graduated on from 8th grade into high school, applying too much black eye liner that to my luck was perfect for my new surroundings. And most recently, I had moved away and graduated from college with good grades and a good attitude.
But now that I am approaching the limbo stick that's stopping me from fully entering adulthood, I find myself falling backwards, unable to "limbo lowa now."
The day I graduated college I was excited to come home. I had been away, met new people, taken classes on everything from Descartes to Da Vinci, and felt like I had really "grown up". Returning home felt like a comforting and congratulating hug that would help ease the pain of job hunting.
I figured I would have a little more time, maybe a month or two, before I was whisked away to the job I had always dreamed of in New York City. The one that would give me enough funds to cover rent in a spacious loft downtown, a career-girl wardrobe, and a few nights out on the town.
It's been ten months since graduation, and although I'd say we did a great job at redecorating, the room I share with my sister is a far cry from the loft I was imagining.
Hadn’t I "grown up"? Didn’t a degree from college mean I had reached a degree of adulthood? I learned to cook my own dinner, schedule my own appointments, and leave a room without explaining where I was going. I was qualified to have a full-time job, although some of my interviewers thought otherwise, move out, and continue the independent lifestyle I had started in college. But the more I stayed home, the more I felt like I was falling on my back unable to pass under the bar to adulthood.
During this time waiting in limbo, I began to carry a weight of expectations around with me wherever I went. I couldn't keep up with the ones I had set out for myself, and I couldn't break through the ones my family and friends had already set in their minds.
With little arm muscle, it took a while for me to build up the strength to toss this dumbbell of expectations aside and find my way under that darn limbo stick.
Watching an episode of Oprah's Master Class this weekend on Maya Angelou was like a trip to the gym. She said something that changed my perspective of my whole situation. She said "love doesn't hold, it liberates; to hold is just ego."
Hammonton in particular seems to have a tight hold on all if its residents. Family and friends are just smaller counterparts of this hold. For so long I thought I had to leave in order to grow and be who I really am. But I realize now it only had a tight grasp because I let it. I was the only one holding myself back from being and doing what I want. It is hard to break through others', not to mention your own, expectations of who you are. But even though it's hard, it is possible.
And maybe I was holding Hammonton, my family, and my friends to expectations they didn't really meet. Maybe I was doing the same underestimating and assuming about them that I had not wanted them to do about me. Maybe I hadn't loved them enough to let them show me who they really are either.
When I looked at it that way I began to appreciate this state of lying on my back in limbo a little more. Maybe I wasn't meant to pass under the limbo stick just yet. Maybe to pass under this stick into adulthood I have to learn that escaping and running around the bar does not really put you on the other side. Maybe growing as an adult, and as a human being, requires you to stay and realize there is still a lot to learn about the people, and places, you thought you already knew (including yourself).
