It’s The Hope That Hurts
I wrote this at 2am during some full moon insomnia, and it ended up being a newsletter that really resonated. I have had lots of replies about this one this week, so I thought I would reproduce it here too.
In my end of year review I talked about how I’d got too much in my comfort zone and lost the go-getter part of myself. I now don’t think this is strictly true. I think I lost the go-getter gradually, as the person I was sharing my life with didn't share or support those things. All the hopes and possibilities I'd had before - of travel, of high achievement, of vitality - had to get real small to match my small reality.
So last year the break up of my relationship was like Viagra for my hopes. They grew bigger than ever, exploding all over my brain: I could go here! I could live in a van in Europe for 6 months! I could go there! I could start doing this! I can do anything!
The thing is, it’s the hope that gets you. It’s the hope that hurts. When it’s been two months since you’ve seen another human, the hope you had of restrictions easing is what makes your heart free fall through an elevator shaft when they’re not (in Wales). When you're hoping your latest idea is going to unlock something for you, it's the hope that makes it hurt when it flops.
So I decided, as hope is the cause of the hurt, I would just stop hoping. No more expectations, no more plans. No hope for the future, just letting it unfold each day as it will. Which sounds morbid, but it did feel better. It felt like a weight was lifted off and the dark clouds parted and I could see my life stretching out ahead of me full of every possibility, all of which were equal because I wasn’t hoping for a particular set of circumstances. I wasn't giving any one idea more weight that another because I was hoping that “maybe in two years I'll have met someone” - everything was a valid option. I wasn't holding out for anything, I wasn't waiting - I was just being.
It felt better for about four days, and then it began to feel much worse.
Hope might be the thing that hurts you but it is also what gives you a reason. Without the hope the reality of my day was shuffling from kettle to laptop and back again until I mixed it up and went to bed. Without the hope of change, that reality was all I could foresee the rest of my life being: an endless tea/work/bed shuffle. Without hope there is nothing to look forward to, no reason to keep going rather than lie down in a hole and stay there until brambles and ferns grow over and people walk past and say “I swear there used to be a girl there, I must have been wrong”.
Hope hurts. I think it’s the touching distance right now - with vaccines happening and Spring on it’s way we don’t want to, well, get our hopes up. There is so much that can still go, and still is going, wrong that our own personal worlds seem out of our hands. The hope of every announcement hurts. The hope that maybe this will be the month you see someone hurts. The hope that your business might make it through hurts. The hope that what you’re doing actually means something hurts.
But these hopes are also the only reasons you’ve got. What the hurt does is remind you that you're still alive; amidst all of this you manage to still be a person who cares, who has drive, who believes, who has willingness to be a part of making it all better. Even when you think “why the hell am I bothering?”, it is the hope for the life and world you want to be a part of creating that gives you the reason. You don't have to have all the answers with hope; you just have to not give up and do the next right thing.
Keep going. Keep hoping.
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