If you were anything like I was when I was a teenager, you kept a diary. And if you're anything like I am now - it can be cringey, bordering on painful (some might say Mortifying) to look back on the angsty teenage thoughts you immortalized. But bear with me a moment, brace yourself for some melodrama, and take a peek into a frame of mind I found frozen into few dozen lines:
“Here I am… This dark room with a chilling wind that cools not your body but your heart and soul…leaving them feeling exposed and frozen.There are no visible windows nor are there doors and yet I am able to see out, somehow. I remember a time when I was not in this room but I do not remember how I came to be here and, because of this, I don’t know if I’ll ever get out.
Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream, and become so certain that I’ve escaped this place and that it and its pain were only part of a hellish nightmare. I feel as though I can finally rest and that somehow, someway, all will be fine. But then I open my eyes and see the void, empty blackness of this room again… I stumble around the room, tripping over things I cannot see…searching.
I run my hands along the rough, jagged rock-face of the walls until they become raw and bleed and then become callused and numb. I keep up my frantic search not knowing exactly what my lost possession looks like, only knowing that I need it desperately. I grope and stumble around the room endlessly until I seem to have drained myself of all the energy that I once held deep within me. And, even then, I continue my search till I can barely stand.
I have fought till I can no longer try and I lie defeated, staring into the void emptiness,
for I have lost hope and I cannot find it.”
Fourteen years ago I was a fourteen year old teenager. Half a lifetime ago. And already at that age, just past a child, but not nearly an adult I was tired of feeling hopeless.
I processed depression, loneliness and hopelessness the way many an emotional teenager processes things, by writing every cringeworthy emotional, angsty thought - preferably as badly formed poetry.
Yet, apart from making me cringe on many levels, looking back on this quote makes me think. For many of my teenage years my mantra may have been “I have lost hope”, yet fourteen years later i feel like I’ve found a new mantra.
Around my neck I wear a small silver pendant, an impression of an antique wax seal, with an image of an anchor and a French inscription "L'Espérance Me Soutient" - “hope sustains me.”
It’s not that I’m an entirely different person than I was I at 14. Of course in a millions ways I am, but part of what makes me cringe when I read the emo-babbles of my teenage self is that I recognize that person still. The struggles that grew in me as I grew out of childhood didn’t disappear, don’t disappear as I grow into adulthood. Struggles with faith and doubt, peace and direction, self worth and depression. And, to be honest, I don’t foresee a day when I will wake up and those things will suddenly disappear.
But what I do see, what I recognize, is that my mantra has changed. In those tens years I have found hope.
I have seen how hope seeps in through the cracks of life.
Through the beautiful and the ugly.
In the face of newborns,
And the eyes of their parents,
In the painful bond of too many funerals
And the shared joy at not enough parties
In Holy vows
Sealed with a kiss
in the tears of confessions,
And the healing of a hug,
Around bonfiresand bottles and roasted breadfruit
In the sharing of shameful secrets
And the patient support of friends
In lots of laughter
Even when life doesn’t seem funny
In the pages of books
And blogs and bibles
And most of all In love.
I’ve found hope in a love that inspires me and revives me. That flows through and between friends and family. A love I aspire to but fail at, yet accepts me all the same. A love that challenges me to love my friends, but also the unlovable, even when the unlovable is myself. A difficult love, but a powerful, healing, transformative love. A love I see lived out on a cross. On many crosses. A love I’m learning. That I am trying to learn.
Hope in this love sustains me. So even when everything seems like shit. When bank accounts dwindle and friends struggle… When doctors give bad news, marriages fail or maybe just the chemicals in my brain tell me that 14 year old me was right. Even then, hope sustains me. They say God is love. Perhaps. And perhaps this kind of gritty, selfless love is God. Shared between broken people, in moments and laughter and tears. And so I hope in this love.
Honestly I don’t always feel it, or understand it, or know why. But I hope in love. Because I’ve been hopeless before, and I know where that leads. But I’ve also seen hope spring up in the strangest places, and there is nothing more beautiful. And I’m going to place my bet on this…