Starting each day with hope

Hope:
1. A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
2. A feeling of trust

Hope has been my favorite word for as long as I can remember. I’ve always felt that no matter how hard things got, no matter how dark and how scary things were…all I could do was hold onto hope. There may be nothing I can do…but I can at least hope for a better future, or for things to improve.

The darkest times in my life have always been those when I ran out of hope. Feeling truly hopeless in an unchanging situation is when I felt desperate enough to make some pretty bad choices.

I wake up every day and try to feel at least a little hopeful for the day. And honestly…some days what I’m “hopeful” for may look very different.

Sometimes it’s hope for everyone to all be in good moods and get a long and be a loving happy family, sometimes it’s hope (or desperation) for at least a few minutes of some ALONE time. A lot of days it’s hope for myself to make better choices…not to drink (as much), not to lose my SHIT on my kids within the first hour of the day (easier said than done, come on now), not to want to die as much as I usually do… Ya know. All the basic things one might hope for.

I guess it’s really no different than having goals, but I like hope, so thats what I go with.

Honestly, it’s easier said than done waking up and successfully feeling even slightly hopeful lately. But as we all know, a universe where I just don’t have any hope is a very scary place to be in. And not one that I want to experience again.

Hope is fleeting. It’s also a choice, although truthfully, it doesn’t always feel like one. When you’re desperate to feel better, when you’re desperate to find something to be hopeful about…it certainly doesn’t feel like a choice.

All I know is that I’m trying. I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to quit… But I also don’t want to always be living in misery. Maybe this is a happy medium, I don’t know.

I guess today what I’m hoping for is just the ability to not give up. The strength to keep fighting, to keep finding things to be hopeful for, even if they’re small. Today I’m hoping to make it to tomorrow. And tomorrow I will hope to have a good, desperately needed therapy session.

And also…not to lose my shit on my kids before lunchtime. 😜