If you’ve ever had issues with your mental health, you’ve probably had moments or time periods where you had no hope. Maybe it’s been years. Hope comes around and out of nowhere. It doesn’t announce its entrance like it doesn’t announce its exit. One day it will be gone. One day, it will just be there. It doesn’t come the first time you journal but it probably will after a year of journaling. Hope doesn’t measure time—its exit and its entrance are not a date in your calendar. Hope isn’t something you can buy. That’s what makes it so special.
My mom has been begging me to focus on happiness and hope for years now. I feel like I focus on the wrong things and I prioritize them because my brain says it will help. But for me, hope could never come from an empty prescription bottle. I had to find it elsewhere. It’s so weird sitting at a doctor’s office as they explain what will help but you know you won’t do any of those things. It’s part of the disorder. I had tried for so long and for so many years that I stopped so I wouldn’t be disappointed all of the time. Deep down, there was some. I went through ECT treatment because I had some hope. But most of the time, I just assumed it was not going to work. Accepting my mental health condition was key. I had to accept that it was always going to be there, but each time I fought, I had hope.
When things weren’t good, I would dream all of the time. These big goals would give me a flash of hope. I liked the idea of them without the mental clarity I needed to reach them. But that’s how it started. And then the hope built. It took so many years, but it did come. It doesn’t stick around all of the time, but it comes enough. I want to say I never fully lost hope, but that’s not true. There were days and months and years that strung together with simple survival skills. I didn’t ever just stop and think “I have no hope”. I was trying to stay alive! My brain was telling me I was better off dead! And all of my hope was gone.
Time is a huge factor- it takes a lot of time. It felt like I was just failing over and over. At some point, it becomes your normal to not have any hope at all . But the biggest reward I’ve been given is remembering the person I was before mental illness. Your hope will grow if you give yourself compliments, practice self-compassion, write down your goals, and get inspired.
What gives me hope? Coming up with a new idea, writing (in general), my family (especially my niece), daydreaming, taking care of myself, deep conversations, this blog, self-help books and memoirs, taking it one day at a time, sobriety, hard work, and animals.
My belief in God is also my hope. If God is real, everything is magic.
Xoxo
