There’s really no hope for you. Whatever it is you might be
struggling with will haunt you the rest of your life. You are destined to
repeat your life of pain again and again, simply passing it on to the next
generation so that they too might live a life of despondency. Your suffering
will be most especially amplified if another has hurt you and through their
death they have left you with no apology for their wrongs.
Oh, you’re still reading? I thought I might have created
such a bleak picture above that you have since slipped into the putrid bowels
of depression and despair, or that a sense of self-preservation caused you to
avert your eyes from the page. It’s a hellish rendition of how life might be
lived, one that I stumbled across and read, that only left me bewildered and
shocked.
When I read the passage posted by this other individual I
gasped. Out loud. And then I cringed as the echoes of ‘No, don’t tell people that!’ rang through my head. Obviously it was
an authentic account of that person’s experience but one that I long to shine
some light upon so that they, and those that might take it as gospel, can
potentially see matters from a fresher, more inspiring and less somber
perspective.
What I wanted to say to the other writer is, “Please don’t ever take away peoples’ hope. Often
times it is the one and only thing that can keep us going.” In my own life I have known this to be true
as I sought healing from childhood abuses and the absence of apologies for
those actions. Hope gave me the courage to move on, however slow and painful it
might have been.
Hope was a whisper of insight, inspiration and possibliites.
Hope was the gentle guiding hands of an angel that said, “Come this way.” Hope
made me open my eyes, lift my head that had been hung in defeat and see the
promise of a new day, a new dawn within me. Hope said don’t give up because I
haven’t given up on you. Hope carried me when the agony left me weak. Hope was
my life-line.
So, to suggest that the circumstances of our torment are
meant only to be a festering mess strips away our power and purpose for life.
It says that we are to live only from a place of victimhood and that our
happiness relies solely on what it is we receive or suffer from another. It
implies that our life is pointless, a virtual Groundhog’s Day of anguish that
bleeds into eternity.
I cannot say it strongly enough, it doesn’t have to be this
way. There is another choice, and it is hope that can take us there.
You will be asked to be the master of your life, not a
puppet. You will be called to comfort, soothe and validate all that seeks
healing within. You, not someone else.
No longer will you naively imagine that an apology will vanquish
all the misery. You will cease to long for the apology that never was, knowing
that even if it were to present itself there are still emotions and thoughts
anchored to the hurtful events that call your attention. You will come to stand
in your power and not hand it over to the people around you.
And it is hope that can take us there.
Will it be pleasant stroll in the park? Probably not. But
the places you will come to know within yourself will only become more magical
as hope casts a dusting of glimmer on your personal landscape. You will know
your purpose, and it will be to love yourself, the wounds that were your
teachers, and the stumbling blocks that took you down a path you couldn’t have
foreseen- but hope did.
I beg of you, don’t release your grip on hope. I offer it to
you so that you too might find your way out of the darkness. I promise you,
hope will take you there because that is what it has done for me.