Hope is Truly Never Gone

You walk out into the world and the light hits you before anything else can. That early kind of light that makes the whole day feel new and undecided. You can be anything that you want here, do anything that you want to do. So why doesn’t it feel like that? Maybe old habits pull you back; the fear, doubt, and regret show up before anything has even gone wrong. Why let them crowd out the dream before you've even had the chance to try?

You remember a time when you didn’t always feel this way. You remember sitting on the back steps with someone one night, just having a normal conversation. It wasn’t about anything major, just the two of you, watching the sky go from orange to that deep, quiet blue. Nothing needed fixing. You wanted to bottle that feeling and keep it somewhere safe, so that on the days when the loneliness crept in and the quiet stopped feeling peaceful, you could open it back up and remember what it felt like to be still. But nothing stays still forever. Moments end, new ones come in and take their place, and you keep moving forward carrying the pieces of the old ones with you.

Later down the line, as you’re lying in bed, you find yourself circling back to the past. The doubt, the fear, the old aching question: do you deserve something this good? Is there someone else out there better suited for love than you are? Maybe you're taking someone else’s blessings. Doubt never waits for an answer. It moves straight on to the next fear: that they’ll eventually leave, and you’ll spend years wondering what you should have done differently in order to make them stay. Underneath all of these beliefs is one massive pain.

Maybe you were the problem this whole time.

You wonder, some nights, whether you’ll keep going, spiral back down, or maybe even find some quieter way to numb it all. A hard question sits beneath all of it: why does it matter so much whether any of this lasts forever? People come and go all of the time. Very few stay for good. Is it the presence of another person you're craving, or are you just walking around looking for the approval of others?

The next morning, you wake up before the alarm goes off. You walk through the house looking for the one beautiful thing that you decided to build your life around. You check every room out of habit, the hardwood cool and familiar under your feet. You end up out back by the pool, empty and still, the smell of chlorine hanging faint in the morning air. You filled that pool because they wanted it. You thought becoming a part of their future was the only way to secure your place in it. You imagined it being the two of you, a family, spending time together with a glass of lemonade by the pool. But now, it just sits there, quiet, holding nothing but the water and the shape of a dream that fell through.

It isn't here. It's never going to be. And in your frantic search, you find yourself walking off the property completely. Past the yard, past the place you have spent so much time calling home. Because some things don't return just because you keep waiting for them.

Over time, as you walk further and further from your past, you can no longer look back and see the house. It's completely out of sight. The only things that still remain from the pieces behind you are the footsteps that you leave in the dirt. Each step that you take is a reminder of where you came from. Each step moves you closer to the unknown and further from the familiar. Moving forward feels like a betrayal of the only place you believed was safe. Maybe the dream was at the house this entire time, and you just didn’t look hard enough.

Why did you leave in the first place?

Is this even going to work out?

Honestly, you have no idea. Part of you still feels the pull of that familiarity. The thought that you didn't have to prove anything to anyone. But the pain is there too. A quieter trauma lives in one of those rooms. The smell of old paint mixed with air gone stale. You’ve tried to scrub the room clean of it, but you couldn’t. It was settled in with the carpet, and baked into the drywall. Every single object that used to mean so much to you was just left as a monument of grief, reminding you of what was lost. You stop walking. You turn around, and look at the tracks you have carved into the road since you left. Familiarity is on one side, but it carries the pain alongside it. An unknown world of possibility on the other. You turn back toward the horizon, take a deep breath, and continue walking, one step at a time.

The first day bleeds away. One foot follows the other, the gravel road filling the silence. By the time the light begins to fade, your legs ache in a way you didn’t expect, and you realize that there's nowhere to sleep. No plan beyond simply walking. You find a patch of earth beneath the canopy of trees. Kneeling to rest, you catch your reflection in a dark puddle by the roadside. The face staring back looks fractured, older already, cast in the twilight. You watch the sky go dark for what feels like the first time in your life without a single safety net waiting for you on the other side of it. Your mind unravels the choices of the day, keeping you wide awake throughout the freezing hours of the night.

When you get up, you feel very sore, and as you breathe out, you watch it disperse into the cold air. You stretch out the stiffness as best you can, until you hear a slight pop. After getting warmed up, you continue forward. The second day stretches longer than the first, though the asphalt looks identical to the miles that came before it. There are no landmarks, no road signs, nothing that shows you how far you have actually gone, and nothing to tell you how much farther you have left to go. The horizon never changes, and that alone wears you down. To keep your mind busy, you count the number of birds that fly by, occasionally losing count and starting over. By the third day, your body gives in. It stops announcing the sharp agony, and slowly settles into a dull constant ache. You haven’t seen the house in days. You haven’t seen anything, really, except that same endless road, unrolling ahead of you with no end in sight.

Are you strong enough for this?

Will there come a moment where the weight is simply too much to bear?

You spent most of your life being the only one showing up for yourself, patching things up alone, figuring everything out without a partner. So when that brief, beautiful glimpse of connection shows up, it feels like the first steady ground you have ever stood on. You just wanted a friend; a teammate. All you want is someone who will walk beside you, instead of just the echo of your own footsteps as you travel the world alone.

The road doesn’t answer back. There is nothing around you for miles, nothing to look at except the empty stretch ahead and the empty stretch behind. In that heavy silence, the pain in your chest, the regret trailing behind you, and the fear whispering in your ear all start molding into the same voice. And that voice keeps arriving at the same answer: turn around. Go home. You can rest your feet from all the walking, relax in the pool, or even take a good nap that will allow you to dream of a future worth fighting for. 

By the time that thought fully takes hold, you have lost count of how many days it has actually been. Your feet blistered a long time ago and went numb shortly after. You can't even look at the road anymore without feeling like your body is going to give in. All you want now is that comforting vision of safety. The relaxing pool, the beautiful bed, a place where you can rest your aching body. The emotions are too heavy and continuing forward feels like more road with no destination. You look forward and see nothing but a vast wasteland of gravel.

Believing that there is nothing out there for you, you start to walk home.

The relief hits you so fast that your knees nearly buckle. It feels good to finally stop. There’s no more fighting, no more wondering if the world is going to accept you for who you are. You have the home that you knew, and right now, that’s all that matters.

As you continue to walk, you think: do you truly believe that you’re making the right decision? You left because you wanted something more than the pain and isolation that had filled most of your life. You wanted someone to share the weight of the world with; a life that wasn’t just you on your own. Going back means returning to that sad and lonely lifestyle. So why go back? Maybe exhaustion is just letting fear dictate your steps. You wonder what life would actually be like back home. Is it the life that you truly want, or was it just something that you were familiar with? Either way, you were left memorizing a feeling you weren’t sure you’d ever find again.

As you walk, you look at the ground and notice the steps that you’ve made. These steps were once meant to carry you toward a new, unfamiliar world. You pass over them, and as you pass by, they start to get to you. You left the past behind for a reason. It’s as if each step belonged to a person who wanted something better for themselves, but they gave up before they ever found out what was waiting for them on the other side. Each footstep feels like a failed dream. You stand there for a while, looking down. Every version of yourself had tried this exact thing, but it always ended the same way: turning back and giving in. You almost understood why. It would have been so much easier to be one of them; to go back to the life you know. It asked almost nothing of you. 

You think about other times in your life when this has happened. The times you made it all the way to the door, but you still couldn’t bring yourself to walk through it. Everything had been set up for you, waiting, and all that was left to do was show up. But you never did. Not because you didn’t want it. You'd already pictured what came next. The version of your life on the other side of that door, already half-lived in your mind before you'd even taken the first step. But somewhere along the way, it had become easier to let it go than to actually reach for it.

One thought strikes like a fist against the back of your ribs.

You left for a reason.

You aren’t going to give up this time.

You press your palm flat against your chest for a second, as if you could hold the thought there before it slips away. You still care about the house, you know you always will, but caring isn’t enough to stop you from looking for something else.

Your legs still ache, but you pick up one foot, and then the other. You feel the ground shift from soft old mud to firmer road beneath you the further you go. You don’t need to know where you are going. You just know that you can’t go back to the past anymore. And as the road opens ahead of you, you grow with it.

With the thought still settled in your chest, you continue walking. Not fast, not with any burst of energy that you don’t have, just steady. One step at a time. Eventually, you pass the spot where you had previously turned around, but you don’t look back at it this time. The road ahead is still just as long, still very unknown, but something about carrying that decision with you makes the distance feel less impossible than it did a moment ago.

You still don't understand what's out there, or whether the thing you left the house searching for even exists. The old life is gone, and the old you isn't coming back. That's not to say pain and regret won't creep in again; it just means you don't want them to have as strong a grip as they used to. With every step, your chest loosens, want and desire moving through you in place of fear. There has to be something out there for you, something that can lead you into a better part of your life, and with the weight of everything you’ve been carrying, this feels like the first real chance to finally let it go. 

Nothing lasts forever.

The weather turns before you're ready for it. At first, it becomes colder. You feel the shivering come as the light fades. As the day turns darker, the wind howls, trying to push you backwards with its might. And then, one small water droplet hits your face. Every few steps, another droplet strikes. Every few seconds, the downpour quickens until you are drenched by the storm. This moment of pure light is swallowed up, and all the past comes pouring back onto you.

As the water pours onto your face you look up at the sky and say:

“Why did this have to happen? Where did all of that love go?” 

And then one grueling question comes to your mind right after:

“Why is it so hard to find again?”

Even through this temporary darkness, you continue forward. There is no going back. The rain begins filling in the steps of your past behind you, slowly erasing the shape of each one. You don’t want to be numb, you just want to understand. You want to feel relief from the pain, as if it no longer has a hold on your heart. Even if it remains, you want to be able to recognize yourself after it subsides. You want freedom, but you have no idea how to achieve that. You’re willing to give anything for it.

You have watched others move through the world as if shielded by invisible hands, never shaken by the same doubts that fill your heart. You wonder, sometimes, if it is because they have someone steady behind them. Someone who stands in their corner, cheering them on, catching them when they stumble. You can’t remember ever having that. You had to be your own foundation for as long as you could remember, but what you built alone was never going to be as strong, or as steady, as what someone else helps you lay. Maybe that's why you always find yourself trying to be that for others, even when nobody has ever truly done that for you. If you can be the thing you never had, maybe it will matter less that you never had it yourself. You stand there in the pouring rain, feet planted in the mud, watching your own reflection ripple and break apart in the puddle at your feet. 

You stop walking. Just for a moment. Long enough for the question to catch up to you, the same one that has held you captive longer than you can remember: what if this life is the debt of a previous one? What if somewhere before this, you were someone so cruel, so despicable, that this life was the cost of it? You turned the thought over the way you always do, looking for some form of proof, some memory that can ease this thought, anything that will make it all make sense.

There is nothing there. There never is.

That’s the hardest part. Not knowing is worse for you than knowing would be, because an answer, even as terrible as that could be, is something to stand on.

The question just sits there in the rain with you, the same way it always does, unanswered. You pick your feet back up out of the mud, and continue walking anyway, carrying it forward the same way that you were carrying everything else on your shoulders.

After several hours, the rain tapers from a heavy shower down to a quiet sprinkle. Your shoulders finally fall, as if they have grown tired of carrying something you never knew was there to begin with. After that, your breath follows, shaky and slow, like it has been waiting somewhere deep inside you for permission to leave. For the first time, those hidden feelings finally come to the surface. You cry out into the empty road, the sound swallowed by the rain, with no one to hear it but you. The storm that just dragged up all your old, buried wreckage breaks, leaving you soaked but strangely light. The emotions are still present, but now they are defined. No longer a mysterious thought or a gut-wrenching feeling. 

As the rain clears, fog rolls in. A heavy, freezing fog swallows the road. You continue to walk, keeping your eyes locked onto the ground. The gray wasteland outside contrasts with the deafening roar inside your mind.

With a slight crack in your voice you say:

"Maybe this is all there is for me. Maybe I was never meant to find the thing that would help pull me out of this darkness."

The words spiral, quieter each time, until the voice is barely recognizable anymore. Just a low hum of doubt that fills the fog the same way the fog filled the road, until one thought manages to cut through, clear enough to hurt.

"Maybe it was at the house this entire time."

Unable to come to terms with the noise, you continue into the depths. You don’t understand what going forward means, but you know what going back would mean: believing the life you had back home was somehow enough, when deep down you knew that you would be settling for something mediocre rather than giving yourself the full opportunity to see something beautiful. For the first time, not having the answers is enough. You just don’t want to give up anymore. Why not make a decision and stick it through to the very end? You don’t need to know where the road leads. You just need to keep taking the steps.

One at a time, you continue into this white cloud of mystery. The heavy, suffocating fog doesn’t change, but something inside of you does. For miles, you have been trapped in the claustrophobia of your mind. These thoughts you have dealt with since the beginning are finally falling into place.

The damp air no longer feels like a weight crushing your chest; it feels like a blank canvas. For the first time, the complete silence around you doesn't feel lonely. It feels like a clean slate. You draw in a deep breath, tasting the wet earth and the sharp scent of the fading rain, realizing that you don't have to let the past control you anymore. You don't have to let it determine where you walk. It is about how you use it to shape who you are becoming.

As that realization hits your chest, everything becomes real. In the beginning, you believed that it was another person that made you find the joy that you wanted in life, but did you ever find joy in your own company? The other person wasn’t what defined you. You were still whole on your own. 

And right there, in the center of your self-worth, the suffocating fog begins to tremble, and an amber glow cuts through the distance. It slices through the thick cloud, filling the world with a sudden, searing warmth. With every step you take towards it, the mist around you fades, burning away the chills and filling the air with a bright but exciting energy. As you continue, the darkness thins. The horizon grows clearer, allowing you to see further into the expanse. Eventually, the sky peels back its dense shroud, exposing an endless canvas of bright colors, filling a beautiful world. It smells like fresh cut grass on an early weekend morning.

As you walk toward this amber hue, the figure comes into focus. You notice that it's the same person from the start of this journey, someone you have almost convinced yourself was never anything but a dream. The weight shifts off your heels. The thick mist finally parts, and the amber light at the end of the road is no trick of the horizon. It pours over you with a sudden, restorative warmth. The weight of a hand finally pulling you out of the dark. 

How did they get here to begin with? You wonder, while your mind scrambles for an answer. And yet, your path and theirs lined up just perfectly. It is as if they knew you were going to take this path. It was almost as if they had known all along where to find you. As you continue to walk up to them, they notice you and smile. Your breathing calms at the sight of it. Warmth, the way sunlight does after a long, cold winter. Their shoes press into the ground near you.

They are real.

They are wearing the same thing that they wore the night on the back steps. The white linen coat was no more worn than the night you first saw it. It was as if no time had passed for them, even though it felt like a lifetime for you.

You speak first:

"You were only there for a minute, and then the next moment you were gone. I needed to find a way to get you back. I never even caught your name." 

“Hope,” they say.

They don't flinch at your words. They just stand there, steady, the way no one ever has.

The sheer weight in that one word brings everything up. As you reach these feelings, the words stumble before you can control them:

“I thought I had lost you.” 

“You did,” they say. 

You turn around to look at the footsteps of your journey. The rain that reminded you of your past, the fog that made you feel so alone, and the walking that filled your feet with blisters. For a moment, you swear you can still smell the wet earth from the fog, faint and lingering, like the road hasn't quite let go of you yet, but there is nothing left but the open world in front of you.

You turn to look at them, and say:

“Then why does it feel like you’ve been here this whole time?”

They smile at you.

“Because even during the hard times when you couldn’t see me...”

Their eyes drift to the road behind you.

“You kept walking.”