This cannot kill me for I’ve said goodbye almost daily for the last seven years. The only thing that makes it hurt a little more today is that… today I truly feel like it’s the last time.
If it is and everything brought us here… I guess everything’s ready for me to stop holding on and I feel it inside, the chord finally reaching its end. Our end. We never even began, but at least we end.
I guess this is my answer…
I guess this is how it ends.
I cannot avoid feeling like nothing will matter ever again, that nothing will ever again make sense… but it was my surrender that brought me here, no you in sight, so… surrendered, I’ll live.
I can’t undo my steps.
I won’t, I cannot take it back because I was choosing life for the both of us back then! I couldn’t, I had nothing to give you… nor you me, nothing but scars and hurt and gray smiles that would’ve killed us so I chose life for the both of us!
I guess that’s all we’ll ever share now, if I’m hopeful enough; my choice and nothing more. Your choice, too, that I cannot change… it’s ok.
He’ll come see you, He’ll come because I beg Him every night.
The seven years are done and although I fear there’s nothing left for me, at least I’ll get to live and I’ll know, even if you never do, that I gave everything I had, my own heart, in the hopes of seeing you live one day too.
SFTS, 18/03/24
This are yesterday’s feelings unbottled for a split second, by morning, Hope had come yet again. There’s one thing I’ve learnt while growing up, due to my having seen everything that hurt, everything that left scars, start healing:
Hope is nothing in itself. We have to place it somewhere for it to have meaning.
The vast majority place it in the future. When it doesn’t come, we move it further ahead in the layers of time, near the far future; the one we chase and doesn’t want to be found, this good future that never arrives.
Others place it in their own selves, giving everything up just to hold on to it, hoping it never turns into nothing in their careful hands. The thing is we ourselves can only do so much for our lives when things become truly dark. Have you ever met darkness, true darkness? I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone; it’s ruthless.
What I’m trying to say is we have, and we all do for that matter, to place our Hope in something we think bigger than ourselves in order to feel like we’ll be saved for better days. Many place it in other people, friend or foe, family or lover, only to come back running with scars and a tear-stained face, or soul.
When I was little, I heard of a name that I could run to, but didn’t quite grasp the whole of the matter.
When growing up, I was so hurt that I couldn’t trust anyone after a few years of never ending storms, not even myself, for in those years I learnt how to keep on causing irreparable damage like a master. I’ve mastered it, the art of moving in sync with darkness, the one that’s always looking for a crack to come in and end you. This is why I stopped my whole life when I couldn’t take any of it anymore, because it almost ended me… sometimes I think it really did, back in May from last year. And I certainly couldn’t stop it. No one could and many didn’t even want to try; maybe just my mom and sisters.
My earthly dad is not my dad. I have a Father, whom for every given purpose on earth I call Dad, but He’s so much higher than what anyone could grasp from the mere word that lost all meaning within me, for a time.
He came flooding like my one and only Hope that night.
Earthly dad was out in the hallway, he didn’t even care when my heart started beating ever so lightly and the machines started beeping hysterically, nor any of the ER’s staff. Mom didn’t hear, but I called for her, still, and so earthly dad went back outside. No, he didn’t care.
Oh but my One in Heaven… I’d confess I do have a Roman Empire:
Him.
Him and these words I came back with when He, big as only He can be, sent me back: the air was sweet, the light was warm, I had forgotten how it felt to have nothing hurt, and the sound… a soft singing that reminded me of His name. The one I couldn’t quite understand as a child. That night I did, maybe for the first time in my life. Oh how everything started hurting again when He restored my spirit into my body, what hurting lives we lead inside this fleshy cages, but what hope He restored for my heart.
Distant lands wait for me to come; they wait with hope for me to save them.
Isaiah 51:5 GNT
I’ve found He’s big enough for me to place my hope in Him.
In Spanish, hope means esperanza. It doesn’t have a verb in itself, as hope does: in English there’s hope, but we can also hope, the word holds a verb and a noun. Not in my main language, in Spanish we have to say “wait”. Esperanza, esperar. Sometimes I grieved this because I love talking about hope and hopelessness and a lot of the things I tried to say in English didn’t hold the same effect when translated to Spanish all because of this. It’s not the same waiting and hoping, after all. At least not to me. Unless, one undresses and bares the whole term to what it really is, because hope is no person, it is no noun unless we place it over this bigger than ourselves being of our choosing and thus they become our hope… I think I’m rambling now, so I’ll get to the point:
Have you found the place or being where you instilled your hope into? Because one thing I learnt growing up, after more than thousands of nights barely gotten through, filled with despair, is, without hope we are as good as dead, but if we choose wrongly, there won’t be light ahead either way…
…everything down here is so fragile… that to me hope has a name now, the same I heard when I was six, the same that followed me into the darkness at 27… the same one who speaks near to my heart today at 28. It’s been almost a year, but I learnt something about hope and the spring, my least favorite season and the one where I died and came back to life again, the one I crave to love and cherish now. I learnt that it’s easy to have hope in the summer, when everything’s green and humid, sunny and festive… in the spring, one has to hope, hope for the weather to warm up, hope for the flowers to bloom and hope for subtle rains to come and feed the ground so it can come alive again… the best land for hope to thrive, then, is the one where its needed. I needed hope, growing up, and was lucky enough to have been seen by the author of my whole life, who looked down and extended His hand. The day He saved me was the day I found Hope, an eternal one. The only one I’ve started to see at work, fulfilling one dream after the other, even if my own dreams had to die for better ones to come down from His heart.
“So I am going to take her into the dessert again; there I will win her back with words of love.”
Hosea 2:14 GNT
And so I instilled my hope in Him. To me, its another one of His names… my Eternal Hope.
Those years when I feared and wondered You heard and answered…
These words You gave I couldn’t understand but kept; almost the same way You’ve kept my heart.
But when You changed the lights around… secrets uncovered by Your own hands… no one could ever compare, do what You did, everything You started all those years back.
How I love You.
You truly took me there, truly You lead me into the wilderness and spoke but not only that… Your hand lit up my heart, I can breathe now.
What a beautiful face.
Everything comes and goes, but this one thing remains unchanged.
-SFTS
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