Having hope is hard. Sometimes, perhaps most times, hope is as insubstantial as the breeze for those lost souls who cannot find it. It beckons like truth, promising better, but delivering nothing but lies.
In the face of abject hopelessness, which is the state of most of my days, I find that looking forward to minor pleasures is a method of obtaining equally minor reliefs from the horrors of daily life.
In the morning, I look forward to my commute, which consists of music, reflection, coffee, and my favorite form of self care. I look forward to providing mutually beneficial assistance to my customers. I look forward to another insight that might help me or another. I look forward to coming home and slipping into my house clothes. I look forward to smoking weed. I look forward to slipping into unconsciousness in my big chair and waking up at 3am to drag my carcass to bed and then slipping out of reality again. Most of all, I look forward to the moments surrounding my inevitable death and the one thing I still hope for: understanding.
But I never look forward to waking up. Arising from nightly unconsciousness is like waking up to my limbs being actively sawn off. Awakening to my life every morning is tantamount to torture. My mind awakens moments before my eyes open and in that brief period, there is a hope that is dashed as soon as I dare to entertain it. For the briefest of moments, the idea of a new day offering new possibilities is grasped at, but because it is a lie, it dissipates between my fingers as if I had reached out to grab hold of a ghost.
Being cursed daily with the promise of help and the denial of hope is such a soul-crushing existence. I see it in the faces of the downtrodden everywhere I find myself. I recognize their struggle while marveling at my own apparent good fortune and my inability to savor it. I recognize those objectively oppressed, but cannot see my own redemption.
But I never stop looking forward to the little things that bring comfort because those are the only things preventing collapse.
-HomieCidal Brainiac
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