The nature of hope

I've been told both hope and trust are good things. I struggle with both, for reasons many and varied. Trust is too big to tackle in one blog post (or maybe in my entire lifetime) but hope is one Gary and I talked thru tonight. I know he doesn't really understand my perspective, but he does understand it's how I feel, which has helped him to reconcile some things about our current situation.

In my own life experience, tho, hope is a liar and a thief. Hope lets me believe that things might be better someday, if I just wait long enough. Which allows me to abandon efforts to make now better because, soon enough, it'll get better. If we can just survive -- not enjoy -- until the hope pans out, then we'll be okay. It's the abandoning now that causes problems for me, because in my sphere of existence, hope is like heroin. I can ignore all the yuck of today -- yuck I could change if I tried -- until the better of my hopes comes to be. And on those occasions when hope doesn't pan out, I'm devastated. I just can't do hope.

This past week, Gary heard about the potential for a local job/route, with the same company that employs him now. I tried not to let myself get too hopeful, not to be too attached to this job as the potential deliverance from this awful time. I hadn't realized how much I'd let myself hope until today, when he found out that job isn't really available after all. The company decided to keep on the driver they were considering letting go. And we're right back to the same reality, minus hope. He still has this job where he's gone 6 days and 4 nights a week.

Really, nothing has changed, except that I allowed myself a week-long trip on hope, and stopped trying to make things better in now-land. And giving up the hope of that job, means I'm stuck back on now-land, where things aren't as I'd like them to be.

The good part, for me, of abandoning hope is that once I refuse the drug hope is for me, I can get about the business of finding the best there is to have in now-land. Sometimes, it's simply an exercise in not letting 'em win -- this is the only time I'll live this day, and dammit, I'm going to enjoy if only to show them I can be happy. At least I used to work that way, but somewhere along the way I've lost touch with the girl who could be happy even when life sucked. In her place is disconsolate madwoman, and she's no fun to live with!

I'm starting to see, tho, that disconsolate madwoman is the outgrowth of doing hope. Since I can't embrace now and hope at the same time, and now is all I have, I'm swearing off hope.

Really, I feel better already. Gary doesn't understand it, but he's happy to say goodbye to disconsolate madwoman.