Limbo was not unchristened babies floating about aimlessly in a void. Limbo was not the fucking waiting room to Heaven as Alighieri would’ve liked us to believe. It wasn’t a crack in time and space. Not the middle ground between salvation and eternal torment. You’re not standing in line with a million other people, waiting for your turn to sew your lips shut in penance for a lifetime’s worth of sins. You’re not stranded ashore thinking, “Oh shit” while everyone else with coins for eyes hops on the ferry.

Limbo was hopelessness. It was your consciousness suspended in a vacuum. It’s waking up with nothing to look forward to but what’s written on your planner. You fool yourself into thinking that every day is a different one when at the back of your head, you know. You have a sneaking suspicion that the calendar’s lying and that Thursdays and weekends and Christmas are just that – names. They’re really all the same day, down to the last trite detail, under the guise of a different title. You brush the uneasy feeling aside but it still lingers as you go about your errands, gnawing at your subconscious. While you’re drinking the office’s stale leftover coffee. While ordering take-out. While lying to your wife’s face. While you stare blankly into space as your clothes swirl around in the laundromat. It refuses to be ignored.

The bathroom mirror fogs up. You wipe it with one hand, suddenly finding yourself face-to-face with someone whose name escapes you. That's the problem with reflections – they always look you in the eye. You begin to see yourself in third person. Everything's an out-of-body experience these days. That can't possibly be you walking around the house in a bathrobe; you don't remember having ever been so uninteresting. Your mind's been on a sabbatical for God knows how long now. Left things running on Autopilot instead. You're like a zombie. Part of you wishes you were one, so you'd have an excuse to eat your family guilt-fucking-free.

You tell yourself you love your life, even if you’re only living for its own sake. You don’t particularly like your boss, your more successful brother (who was always Mother’s favorite) or even those rotten spoiled imps you call your children. But hey, what’s there to do? Everyone follows a schedule, including you. Alarm clocks go off. You cut yourself shaving again. Your wife has her back turned to you in bed. The kids need braces. Someone else got the promotion. Don’t forget to pick up the steak sauce on your way home. All the while, you get the nagging impression that you’ve done this all before. That’s because you have.

Things could be worse, you think. Happiness is a luxury item, one you can't afford. You're not picky, anyway. As long as things are bearable. The thought of it is what's keeping you from tying a noose around your neck and skipping this part altogether. Fast-forward right to the afterlife, see how this movie ends. It's the veil that hides the banality of your existence from you. And in a sad way, you're grateful for it. Those people you see on the evening news, read about in the paper – the ones who come to school or the office all trigger-happy with a .44 caliber in hand, they've had that veil lifted from their dull eyes. They've realized that things, in fact, can not get any worse now that they've finally hit rock bottom. Like in a recurring bad dream, they think they can wake up to something better if they can bring themselves to change just one thing. Derail the nightmare. Because don't you know? Limbo is déjà vu disguised as routine.

And before you know it, you’re dead before you even stop breathing.