My journey so far

[Little2Nothing]

Thank you. 

[Papa Coco]

L2N,

Your heartfelt and sincere posts draw me in every time. I feel, or have felt, every word of your recent posts in my own life also.  When I read your letters, I don't just understand the words, I feel them. Empathy does that. We empathize when we have walked in the shoes of another. And empathy is one of the most beautiful feelings in my life. Love, connection, forgiveness, empathy...these are the feelings that I live for, and BTW, those aren't poetic words. I live for connection. I am still alive today only because of connection. I've been rescued from suicide about 4 times now, at ages 12, 20, 20 again, and 50. Each suicide attempt came during a feeling that nobody was connected with me, nobody cared about me, and the pain from being alone in a crowded world was literally unbearable.

Today's post drew me in mostly from your contemplations on Hope.

Speaking only for myself, hope, like anything, can heal me or kill me, depending on how I use it. It kept me going for a long time, but it never brought me out of the pain. In fact, in my life, it eventually caused a lot of my pain because the thing I'd hoped for from birth just never, ever, ever materialized.

In 2010, after our baby sister's suicide, my huge Catholic family totally unraveled. We had finally come to a long-needed war that irreparably tore the entire clan apart once and for all. (I am quoted as saying "my family finally became so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore"). My eldest sister and I both ostracized at the same time (actually I left first. A few years later she left also. I never knew my eldest sister because she was married and gone from the west coast when I was only a small child. We've recently reconnected, but neither of us are back in the family, nor do we even know if any of them are still alive or not). Our littlest sister had been one of the people who'd saved me from suicide in my childhood (1972). But by 2008, they'd driven her to suicide, and I wasn't able to save her the way she'd saved me. As with the death of your lifelong friend, my life changed course at the death of my beautiful little sister. Knowing it was the family that did it to her opened my eyes to realize they were at the root of my own suicides also.

In 2010. I cursed hope. It had driven me deeper into the jungles of hopelessness by failing to help me dig up and out of the loneliness of my life. I started looking for any way to lift myself up from despair without following my beautiful sister into the darkness. I found a quote that changed me profoundly.

"Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."
― Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Sometimes, when we are so out of balance that we aren't even surviving, we suddenly overcorrect. We swing the pendulum too far the other way. If we do this on a bicycle, obviously we trade one problem for the opposite. Overcorrecting leads to an unrecoverable wobble and finally a mouthful of gravel in a twisted mess of flesh and chrome.  --But then, we learn, and we never overcorrect with the handlebars again. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I think that's what I did. I over corrected. Nietzsche's life was a struggle from birth. He had proven to have insights into the human psyche that are still studied in psychology today, but at the same time he was riddled with health problems that not only didn't get better but progressed insidiously until his death. His hope for healing was unrealized. He was, in some ways, a fellow tortured soul. Perhaps more so than us. But his words of despair hit me in the heart and changed my view of life forever.

At first, I felt a huge relief. I saw that it was my hope that had kept me voluntarily tied to the deck of my family's sinking ship. My misuse of hope was from being raised in incurable pain. As a child I was helpless to defend against the jealousies and criticisms of my family and church. Since I felt helpless, hope was my only strategy for healing. Helplessness drove me to use hope too strongly. Hope had me sitting in wait for that ultimate apology from my abusers for what they'd done to my little sister and I. We were the late in life babies. My two next-elder siblings (#'s 2 and 3 of 5 --I'm #4) were much older than sis (#5) and I. Their abusive ways of treating us, coupled with the abuse the two of us had suffered in Catholic school, set us apart from the "real family" while it bonded us to each other like soldiers in a foxhole. (She's been gone since 2008, and I still cry when I try to talk about her). I know I'm not alone in feeling trapped in hope. I think this is what drive many people to say, "hope is all we have left". Hope can be driven by helplessness. When we have no other avenue, hope itself becomes the last hope.

I think that, for me, I have to realize that hope itself wasn't bad, but that when the day came that I could stand on my own, I had simply forgotten to stop relying solely on it like it was all I had left in the world.


TODAY: I'm trying to find the proper use for hope. It has a purpose, and I'm not good at truly recognizing what that purpose is. I relied on it solely to fix my pain, and obviously that's not what it was meant for.

I vilified it after sister's suicide. I walked away from it. I scorned it. I blamed it for my stalled lack of self-confidence to fix my own problems. I had wasted my life overdoing my hope for change to happen while the world around me went out and forged their own change. Hope didn't save her and it wasn't saving me. I had mistaken it for having a power it doesn't have, while somehow not truly learning what it's true power actually is.

I don't mean to be hijacking your journal. I just wanted to share with you that your words around hope touched me, and I wanted to share with you why they touched me. It's easy to say "I resonate" but the words "I resonate" mean more when I share with you why I resonate.

I guess, in what sounds like a lighthearted joke, but it's a serious comment, "I hope I can find the proper way to use hope" so it drives healing, rather than prolongs my agony.

I think that I am healing. I feel much more stable and able to let go of the pain of my past now. I know I can't change the past, but the books I'm reading now are teaching me how to heal the emotional pain of the unchangeable past.

But, I am truly working to find the real purpose and best use for hope in my own life.

As is my custom, I apologize for writing such a long response, and for possibly adding my own drama to your trauma. If I missed the mark here, by adding too much of my own feelings to yours, I apologize. You've sparked me to take a look at hope again, and I wanted to share with you that your posts are typically quite helpful to me.

Sincerely, and from the heart,

PC

[Little2Nothing]

PC,
I am so sorry for the things you have endured. In spite of it all you are a kind and caring person. 

You have not hijacked my journal. Your posts are always helpful and full of insight. You have been a valuable friend. 

The thing about hope is that as cruel as it seems it still spurs us on to improve ourselves. Hope in unrealistic expectations is where the pain starts. 

I have envisioned myself living free of pain and unmoved by the past. It is a kind of emotional utopia. 

Realistically, the past will always be with me. My desire is to recognize it, contextualize it, and know that it can no longer harm me. It seems simple, but it has been the hardest goal for me to reach. My emotions, brain, and body just don't want to cooperate with my will. 

I'm sure I'll get there someday. 😌