Dear Friends,
If there’s one thing I was raised without, it was hope. Hope is this intangible thing I’ve had to teach myself to believe in without much proof of. I’m no lawyer, but I am quite inquisitive, so for that reason, hope is always both my best friend and enemy in life. Hope makes me feel inadequate sometimes, as if I’m almost unworthy of its gifts because I don’t *always* believe. I wasn’t born a Disney princess. While I love a good fairytale, I honestly have no idea whether I’ll get my happy ending. I wasn’t born believing.
I do, however, feel like I reach a point on nights like these, nights when I’m feeling uber optimistic for no apparent reason, that I can get to the place where hope meets faith, and the place they come together, I can get to. I don’t have a name for it (fope?) but I do reach hopefulness and then try my hardest to get to the faith part. I don’t default to either of these glorious feelings, growing up in a house where up and down was morning, noon, and night, so when I force myself to believe, I see myself watching the fireworks show at Disneyland. I am maybe 12 or 13, and I am watching these beautiful fireworks *hoping* and *foping* that someday I wouldn’t be watching them alone. That someone would be holding me, or buying me a churro, or grabbing my hand. Would you believe that I’ve felt these feelings before? I’ve had these moments, the moments that are supposed to build up my faith column in my head. The “prove me right” moments. The thing about those moments, though, is that unless they happen repeatedly, they almost seem like magic. You know how humans can’t remember pain? I think they also can’t literally remember joy either. They can smile upon those times, just like you can remember how badly it hurt when you broke your knee 10 years ago, but you can’t neither wince in pain or smile in joy. It’s a shame, really, that’s why I keep a diary. If for no other reason than to realize that I have to write to vaguely remember, and then jog my memory years later.
When I moved to New York, I had hope. I still have hope. The job I have gives me a whole whirlwind of feelings that I never thought I would find in my work. It’s the beautiful marriage between passion and reality. I think you need both of those factors in a situation to make it both meaningful and powerful. When I moved here I came for three things: dream job, dream man, and dream book. Is it ludicrous that I don’t know what to do now that I’ve found one of them? And aren’t I lucky that it’s the one that stays with me from 9 to 5. I know I’m lucky – that’s why I have faith that it will keeping working out. I hoped for it, now I have to have enough faith to sustain it. I think hope is magical but faith what makes things sustainable. People probably wouldn’t keep procreating if life was so terrible and hopeless, right?
Kisses,
Jessica
