on hope/hopelessness

I admitted to a close friend, "What hurts the most isn't that S. doesn't like me, but that I hoped she would and yet another hope has been shown to be a disappointment. I am slowly beginning to fear the very idea of hope. If hope just disappoints, why hope? I haven't hoped for much in this life. I really haven't. But those things that I HAVE hoped for have always been disappointments." That conversation is long over, and I am sitting here before bed just thinking about my perception of things and, ultimately, my perception of hope as always being a disappointment. A few observations.

First, I have gone through several phases "hopelessness" in my life. While one hope that is a disappointment leads to hopelessness, that hopelessness evolves into the same hope but sketched differently. When that hope ends up being a disappointment, the cycle continues all over again. Maybe my hope should not be placed in these sketches but, overall, that one day a sketch of hope will blossom into the fruition and realization of that hope?

Second, I have gone through phases in my perception of hope. I will first perceive hope as a beautiful thing. Then, when that hope ends up being a disappointment, I will enter into a semi-nihilism where I perceive hope to be a damning lie. As the hopelessness intensifies, breeding apathy and despair, I slowly begin questioning that perception and begin toying again with the idea of hope, perhaps because hope is a sort of medicinal salve to my current despair. I will then hope in a grand scheme for things to get better, and then that hope will become narrow-windowed as it engulfs a certain scenario. The process then repeats itself over and over again.

Third, my behaviors are characterized by the stage of hope/hopelessness that I am in. Amidst hope, for example, I am more self-controlled, less prone to outbursts, more outgoing and happy, and I am more diligent and studious and meaningful in my actions. Amidst hopelessness, I start doing things I wouldn't normally do (usually in an effort to escape the pain of the hopelessness), I will at times lash out verbally and say really mean and hurtful things, I will become seclusive and reclusive, and I will distance myself from everyone except my closest friends, and I am generally apathetic towards all aspects of life.

Fourth, I enter into a religious depression when hopelessness invades. I become lazy in my prayers, and when I DO pray, the prayers are more often than not filled with more yelling and crying than anything else. I become apathetic towards "living the Christian life" and basically being the kind of person God wants me to be (I thank God for grace, and "thanking God" here is not a figure of speech). Ironically, amidst this religious depression, many of my "religious" dispositions are called into question, shattered, reformed. It is thanks to these religious depressions that I have grown spiritually, both as a person of God and in my knowledge and understanding of Him and His workings in the world.