What I've Lost

This picture came up on my Facebook news feed asking, "If someone gave you a box of everything you have ever lost, what is the first thing you will look for?". It stopped me cold. First thought was my innocence. And I say this while not fully being sure when that was taken. But is that what I would want first? Perhaps hope. I realize how negative this sounds but I don't have a lot of hope.

Hope feels like one of the many promises made to me throughout my life that never materialized. When I'd hope, pray, beg and everything only got worse and completely out of my control, I learned it was much less painful to simply not hope at all. I'll hold onto hope for you but shun it for myself.

I've thought back to when my final moment of hope was, and as with most things in life it was a progression and not a single instance. I lost some when my church shunned my mother and I after she left my father, and then told horrifying lies about us. I lost some when we had to move out of our house in a matter of hours when I was 16 as my mother's drug dealer boyfriend was threatening to kill us. I lost some after pleading to a God I once believed in to save my marriage, and 22 years later nothing had changed. I lost some when my father disowned me and no one in my family cared. Hope never helped me.

Instead of hope I have belief in myself, my resilience and my willpower. I've said many times before about myself, "What I lack in talent, which is a lot, I make up for in tenacity." I know I can hustle with the best of them. I can survive without much sleep, I can power through agonizing pain and I have sucked up more shitty moments than most can even conceive of. This becomes a life of survival and it's exhausting. 

It's interesting that though I don't have hope, I have a huge focus towards giving others hope. I share the worst of my life with the belief that someone will be healed, be saved and find their way out by knowing they aren't the only one. Maybe what I've lost can be returned through a hope outside of myself.