a Post about Hope

Hope is something that I have struggled with in my life. Struggled to have it. Struggled to be rid of it. Hope and I have epic fights. Is it like this for everyone? I don't know. Call me crazy, but I thought hope was simply there, something you had or didn't have. Not that it was something that you could miss with your entire being, or wish would go away.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I was completely, madly and stupidly in love with a man. I was not married to this man. In fact he was in a position of authority over me. Because I believed him to be an upstanding kind of guy - Because I gave him every opportunity to make the things he did, the things I did, the things we did together mean absolute zero - Because he let me believe these things meant something to him too - Because I wanted so much to believe - I believed his lies (what he would probably call 'possibilities that did not come to fruition', but he did not try to make them happen, only said we would do x or y and then did nothing to make the things happen) and ended up emotionally slammed against a brick wall. Repeatedly.

Despite the emotional beatings, despite KNOWING beyond a doubt that he was never going to be the man he set out to make me believe he was, I could not shake hope. Hope sat on my shoulders and would not leave. I tossed it in the creek along with a gift he gave me. I burned it in things I had that would burn. I lit black candles and wished it away. It did not leave.

Hope would periodically slither down around my chest and squeeze so hard I could not breathe. I had to see this man everyday (yeah someone I worked with) and would sob all the way home thanks to his stupidity and cruelty (going to the printer to get some document to find the Match.com e-mails he had printed off; finding a porn DVD in the laptop he had used last, etc.) I was done with him, done with the job, long before I was able to leave that office, long before hope released me from its grip.

When the day came that I could look to the sky and not see him, I felt blessed beyond belief.

Now? Now there are days I would not be able to find hope with both hands if it were plastered to my ass.

Now I need hope sitting on my shoulders. Now hope feels more like a thin and flighty scarf than the weighty boa constrictor it felt like before. I keep finding that it is so close to weightless, so transparent that it keeps slipping off. I keep having to search for it, somewhere behind me, and try again to get it to rest upon my shoulders.

I feel that instead of hoping, I am merely trying to have hope.

I have found that the days when I woke thinking "this could be the day!" are gone. The best I can muster is "this is one day closer to the end of this crap time". Is this hope? Or simple logic? Does it matter? It is as close to hope as I can get right now.

I need this to get better soon.