When hope wears thin…

I know from personal experience what hope worn thin feels like and, as one who is a listener of stories, I am aware that this is not an uncommon knowing. How did we get here, to this place of feeling hope is lost? And how do we move from hope lost to hope renewed?

The latin root for the words hope and despair is the same. How does hope and despair come from the same place? Roots… that which provides the nourishment of life…. How can both hope and despair find life in the same roots? The word despair is an alternate word for the original word hopeless. Hope and hopeless begin the same in their roots but something changes how the tree grows. One tree grows ‘less’ than the other and before we realize, in our rat-race lives, what is happening, we are suddenly in the shadows and without light to properly feed our roots.

It is, for some, like walking along a gentle path through life when a sudden change impacts and shakes their entire world. I hear it described in a variety of ways such as, but not limited to, “a sudden drop into darkness”, “the lights just went out”, “a shock”, and “falling into an abyss.” For others, like me, it is a lifetime of holding on to the knot at the end of the rope while slowly moving closer and closer to seeing the rope as a way out rather than a lifeline to keep us in. As a paramedic and a firefighter, I have been witness to far too many folks, both young and old, who came to the end of their rope and chose to turn it into their way out. To be very sure, it creates a great conflict within me to find myself standing in those very shoes wondering if I can hang in for another day.

Is it a positive attitude one lacks? Is it only a pessimist that looses hope? Is lost hope only justified by catastrophic trauma or those who lives are complicated by such stress that their hearts and minds fail them? Is hope that has worn thin always depression that requires medication? Is there really a box we need to find or create for a society loosing hope? No to all of the above and to all the other boxes we use to pathologize a heart and mind whose hope has worn thin or which has broken entirely. The answer to why hope wears thin is found only within each persons story. The boxes we have come to use to place hopelessness into are, in many cases, only serving to amplify the pain and deny the freedom one seeks.

So then what do we do when hope wears thin? At a time in one’s life when all feels lost and aloneness grows into isolation…. what can a person do to restore enough hope to survive even one more day? When praying feels empty and even one’s faith is not enough… what then?

I know those questions well for they are my own. I have stood face to face with my own mortality and felt more alone than any human should and, until I gutted my contact list, I did not really know who I could trust to simply hear my truth and hold me in the darkness. And so I came closer and closer to choosing my ultimate end. It was then, in my desperate aloneness, that I took a risk and picked up the phone. I had four phone numbers memorized and I had to try one last time…. I needed help to just get through that moment and I needed to ask. I didn’t need to be fixed and I wasn’t looking for the magical words that would free me (though wouldn’t that be sweet), I only needed to be held by one person who knew and accepted my whole, authentic, messed up, Self. I needed someone with a backbone strong enough for two. I needed only to know that someone had the courage to tarry with me through my own personal hell. I needed pure, authentic compassion. The origin of the word compassion is very ancient and means simply “to tarry with” rather than to “do” or say anything in particular. And I desperately needed someone to tarry with me through the hell I had fallen into since before I could form words and memories.

I survived that moment, which lasted a few days, and I learned just what it means to have even just one person who knows my authentic Self and has the capacity to hear my truths as I know them to be. I have a journey to stay in, one that is filled with a history of abuse and loss, sorrow and terror, shame and guilt. I want to be whole and well as I age and I have come to see, at this place in my life, that less really is more, that simple really is sweet, and the cover really is not the book.

For you who answer my call…. you are teaching me what true love really tangibly looks like. For you whose stories sound, in many ways, just like mine…. know who your life lines are and please…. pick up the phone.