The world currently feels stacked against me: Covid-19, crippling debt, my mother’s crippling debt, my mother’s mental and physical health are constantly fluctuating, I wonder every month if this is the month the banks foreclose on my house, my depression, my anxiety, my lack of a proper income, my lack of savings due numerous factors, the state of this ridiculous country I live in are just a few of the issues that bombard me at various times throughout the day.
And yet, I hope. I have an instinctual feeling that there is a brightness at the end of these dark times. I do not know where it comes from or how it has persisted for so long. It is honestly baffling and there are more times than I can count where I question my sanity. But still, I hope. It flutters in my chest like caged butterflies. Overflows my mind like a flooding river. It consumes me. At times, I wear it like a shield when realists and pessimists alike attempt to “open my eyes to the truth.” I do not need their truth. I do not need to be weighed down by their thoughts. I already have to fight through my own self-hatred, self-doubts, people pleasing, and cope with the days when I loathe my very existence. How is it that even in these moments, I still hope? I hope for the day when I no longer hate myself, and now I even think it could actually be achievable. It is no longer a myth, but fact.
Maybe that’s why I have hope. I hope for a better future because I have finally gotten to a place mentally where I am, for the most part, at peace and even pleased with myself. I no longer lie around and think of the multiple ways I could die with relish or dread. I daydream of a future, of that damned farm, of people who are in my life and happy to be there.
Happily ever after is at hand and all I have to do is grasp it.
Erisel Cruz 