There was a time in my life when I was suicidal.
I remember standing on a bridge over the Ohio River, wanting to throw myself off.
I remember staring at that inky black water that refused to reflect even the full moon’s radiance.
I remember wanting nothing more than to leap, to feel the wind, to feel the water… and then to feel nothing. Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.
I have always been fond of describing hope this way: “Hope is like barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more painful it gets.”
What is the function of Hope? Why does it exist? Do we hope simply because it is a fantastical escapism from the painful realities of ordinary life? Or do we hope because we know, deep down within our hearts, that something is wrong with the world, that something isn’t quite right, that the life we’re living NOW isn’t the life that we were DESIGNED to live?
At one time I believed that hope found its source in man’s fantasies and imaginations, that hope was a cocktail of desire for something more and desire for less of what we have.
But I have been thinking about hope, and I believe that hope is something that is nestled deep within every human creature, a small element that speaks to us in whispers and dreams and fairy-tales, telling us that what we experience HERE and NOW is not what we were MEANT to experience. Hope tells us that there’s something missing within our universe, within our lives, within ourselves. It tells us that there is more to be grasped, that there is the possibility of a greater and more wonderful life, a kind of life that we were designed to experience.
Isn’t it odd that when you try to suffocate hope, hope refuses to die? It has been said that when you kill hope, you embrace resignation–the acceptance of fate as “an elegant, cold-hearted whore.” I don’t think that’s right. I think that when you try to kill hope, hope refuses to be killed. Because when you kill hope, you have killed everything within you that speaks of a greater world. And when you kill hope, the only permissible fate is suicide. Because without hope, we are left to understand the world as a brutal, unforgiving, relentless world where suffering reigns and happiness is an illusion. And if that understanding–as false as it may be–is called one’s own, then that person will, ultimately, kill him(her)self.
I didn’t throw myself from that bridge.
I went back to the car, got inside, and drove home.
I was suicidal for five more months.
Every day and every night I wept. I became a recluse, and I started cutting myself.
But never deep enough to drain my body of four pints of blood.
“What was it that kept me alive, what was it that kept me from drawing the knife against my wrist, kept me from tightening the noose around my neck, kept me from swallowing countless pills, kept me from driving my car at 90-mph into the median, kept me from throwing myself from that bridge?”
It was hope within me.
Small. Seemingly inconsequential.
But it was there.
And it showed itself in my tear-stained journals, daring to reveal itself through the pen.
Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.
It is hope that keeps us alive.
I remember standing on a bridge over the Ohio River, wanting to throw myself off.
I remember staring at that inky black water that refused to reflect even the full moon’s radiance.
I remember wanting nothing more than to leap, to feel the wind, to feel the water… and then to feel nothing. Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.
I have always been fond of describing hope this way: “Hope is like barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more painful it gets.”
What is the function of Hope? Why does it exist? Do we hope simply because it is a fantastical escapism from the painful realities of ordinary life? Or do we hope because we know, deep down within our hearts, that something is wrong with the world, that something isn’t quite right, that the life we’re living NOW isn’t the life that we were DESIGNED to live?
At one time I believed that hope found its source in man’s fantasies and imaginations, that hope was a cocktail of desire for something more and desire for less of what we have.
But I have been thinking about hope, and I believe that hope is something that is nestled deep within every human creature, a small element that speaks to us in whispers and dreams and fairy-tales, telling us that what we experience HERE and NOW is not what we were MEANT to experience. Hope tells us that there’s something missing within our universe, within our lives, within ourselves. It tells us that there is more to be grasped, that there is the possibility of a greater and more wonderful life, a kind of life that we were designed to experience.
Isn’t it odd that when you try to suffocate hope, hope refuses to die? It has been said that when you kill hope, you embrace resignation–the acceptance of fate as “an elegant, cold-hearted whore.” I don’t think that’s right. I think that when you try to kill hope, hope refuses to be killed. Because when you kill hope, you have killed everything within you that speaks of a greater world. And when you kill hope, the only permissible fate is suicide. Because without hope, we are left to understand the world as a brutal, unforgiving, relentless world where suffering reigns and happiness is an illusion. And if that understanding–as false as it may be–is called one’s own, then that person will, ultimately, kill him(her)self.
I didn’t throw myself from that bridge.
I went back to the car, got inside, and drove home.
I was suicidal for five more months.
Every day and every night I wept. I became a recluse, and I started cutting myself.
But never deep enough to drain my body of four pints of blood.
“What was it that kept me alive, what was it that kept me from drawing the knife against my wrist, kept me from tightening the noose around my neck, kept me from swallowing countless pills, kept me from driving my car at 90-mph into the median, kept me from throwing myself from that bridge?”
It was hope within me.
Small. Seemingly inconsequential.
But it was there.
And it showed itself in my tear-stained journals, daring to reveal itself through the pen.
Hope is a beautiful and dangerous and wonderful and painful thing.
It is hope that keeps us alive.
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