Hope

Its a funny thing. Sometimes I am so full of it, and sometimes, I feel so bereft of it. I have not had a particularly hard life, but I have seen my share of death and regret, unhappiness and pain. When we're young, we learn to cope with those feelings in different ways; sometimes its not so much a battle to cope as it is to survive. I think, by the time we have found our mid twenties we forget how life and death our childhood really is.



Some of my most powerful, special memories are my saddest. I keep them closest to my heart, I suppose as a type of armor, a way to protect myself from when times are the most desperate; the most hopeless. I'm not sure if it developed over time, or if it had always been this way; but I did eventually learn to find the beauty in such sad emotion. The only way to really feel so sad was to have had experienced equatable amounts of happiness. In this way, each happy and sad event stretched my emotional boundaries- and that is beautiful, that I could experience such powerful emotion.



At night those old childhood feelings of loneliness and depression often come back to me; perhaps it is an 'emotional memory' my body has adjusted to over the years. Like a pattern, or habit it has fallen into. A discussion with a friend while gazing out at the sea in front of me reminded me of the importance of both loss, and gain. Of sorrow and happiness, and how necessary, and even beautiful, they both are. Like dancers, they compliment each other, and cannot be understood or truly appreciated without both of them present.

Hope. Times are hard for me, but times are beautiful too. I will look back on this, and forever know that I survived it.