"Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." - Desmond Tutu
I have lost hope.After over 15 years of sitting here writing at Christmas, this is the first year I write without hope. This has been a very very dark year. The abyss has stared back. A year of great loss and struggles with health both of the mind and the body. But yet Christmas is a time of year when we try to fan the flames of hope to bring more light into the darkness. It is also the time of year that brings us closer to the scars of the past, burns of failure, isolation, and abandonment.
Over the summer I tried to capture the darkness in word. I plotted out a three essay arc. Robin Williams had just committed suicide. I wanted to contribute something raw to the conversation on how mental illness destroys hope. I wanted to stop calling this mental illness an illness and just a variation outside the norm. I thought I had a story to share and an insight to offer. The structure and narrative poured out easily. I created a stream of consciousness flow as if trapped in memories that flip across time. I thought it was quite clever as I pushed past anger to get to a truth.
At the start I had no idea how it would end. But I kept pushing forward unwrapping the darkness. And when it came time to write the third act ending? I could not. It is still waiting for an ending. If you want an insight into my brands of madness it is here. Not for the faint of heart but this is how we got to here. (And it's also a great way to pad this piece with previously written content that people may not have seen.)
Act One My Not So Random Beautiful Madness
Act Two My Not So Random Beautiful Madness
The reason it remains in writer's block hell is because there is no hope. I have been writing in some way shape or form since I was 20. I've been paid to write and I have written to stay sane. The one thread weaved with care throughout all the wordsmithing was hope. Regardless of how ugly or nasty the truth there had to be hope.
I've always fancied myself as someone who could face the harshest realities of life and still have hope in the human experience: still believe in all this magnificence that we've cleverly created, still believe in the human capacity to triumph over adversity, still believe in the bonds of love that bind hearts, still believe that this full catastrophe is worth it. Hope I believe is the power core of human experience. I have lost this hope. I have often said that I used to be a romantic idealist until my life experience beat that shit out of me. I think this year it got any miniscule bits that might have been still lingering in my psyche.
There is no magic cure, no "have you tried", no hand to take hold of, and nothing to be fixed. I would love to wax poetically on despair and after leading you on a mental tour de force come out the other end all the better knowledged with the appropriate amount of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy to sound erudite if not pedantic. But that would be a lie, a fool's errand. It would be saying the things we need to hear to keep finding meaning in this madness. I have no answers just the solace of chosen solitude. I take comfort in the words of Kahlil Gibran:
from On Pain
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding...
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility...
Perhaps within the silence and tranquility of solitude there is still an ember to be found. Damn it that sounded almost hopeful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5aWtcb_dEg
Merry Christmas.
