The other night my girlfriend and I were having a conversation with a friend. My girlfriend was explaining to our friend that I am a lawyer who is no longer a lawyer. Later we were discussing my relationship status. My girlfriend said she couldn't refer to my boyfriend as my ex. Nor is he my boyfriend at the moment.

As I added up the sums of these conversations I realized that this non-status sums up my whole life at the moment. I am a lawyer who is no longer a lawyer. I have a boyfriend who is no longer my boyfriend. I am unemployed but working. I no longer belong to my old apartment in San Francisco, nor do I belong to my friend's apartment where I'm staying now.

I am a girl in limbo. Between my previous law career and my forthcoming career as a literature professor. I inhabit the spaces between. Not quite employed, not quite unemployed. Not quite single, not quite in a relationship. I have no idea where I will spend the next year until grad school, what city and state I will live in, what I will do for work.

There is a part of me that is completely comfortable with this in-between existence, and a part of me that is equally uncomfortable with it. The adventurer in me, the traveler, loves the freedom. I love that I am living in New York, that I may choose to stay here and fulfill a lifelong dream or I may choose to return to San Francisco, my lifelong home. At the same time I am a planner, and the planner in me wants to know what the plan is. Will I return to San Francisco, will I stay in New York? Will my boyfriend and I reconcile, or do I need to move on? Should I be finding work to sustain me in New York, or enjoy the freedom for a couple of months and focus on sustaining a life back home?

At the end of the day I have no answers. I would admittedly love a crystal ball. I would love to see the outcomes of all possible paths and then choose the path that looks like it will bring me the most happiness and success in life. But there is no crystal ball. Instead I have my eyes and ears open and am paying attention to the signs the universe provides. As doors open for me I enter them.

There is a unique kind of hardship to this existence as well. This weekend at a low point I distinctly felt the need to return home immediately. And at the moment I was making plans in my head I realized that I don't have a home to go home to, a life to go home to, at least not in the way I had a life before I left.

I cannot return to my boyfriend at the moment, who needs this time to himself. I cannot return to my apartment – there is a subletter living in my old room. I have no job there, nor do I have the same network of people offering me work as I do here. It was a sad and low moment for me when I realized I can't return to my old life now, even if I want or need to. Maybe I can return in a couple of months when some time has passed and some things have changed, but right now, at this moment, I cannot return to my old life. That is fine when I have a life here in New York, but in those rare moments where I fear I cannot live my life here either it is truly scary and sad to know I may not belong anywhere.

But I am an eternal optimist. If I can ride out the wave for a moment and get past a low point I come around to see that life is livable here or there. I have made the best of every opportunity I have had in this life thus far, so there is nothing keeping me from doing the same in the here and now.

In the end I truly believe that everything happens as it is meant to. And so I am open to the possibilities and resign myself to the fact that I am not in control, that I am merely along for the ride. Until choices are made and life becomes more settled, I am contentedly resigned to being a girl in limbo.