Unravelling hope

When you feel like the sun isn’t shining anymore, but it is to everyone else. It is shining down on your face but you don’t feel its warmth. You feel cold, no warmth being your safe haven. You feel cold. No, you feel something akin to dread prickling over your skin. Your skin heats up and cools down, as if undergoing tumultuous waves of fever. Then it all stops, and you realize what you were feeling all along —emptiness.

Hollow like an empty vessel.

Your mind is in an absolute frenzy, going wild with unwelcomed thoughts, going to dark places. Opening barriers and knocking down doors you thought that you had secured closed. But then reality sinks in — you aren’t safe anymore. The shields have been knocked down, crumbled to dust with no reconstruction in sight anymore. It feels like being inside a nightmare, except that it is real. It is happening; you’re experiencing it. The phrase ‘living a nightmare’ doesn’t get truer than this. It is harsh, it is cruel and worst of all it is real. It is happening and both your mind and soul are suffering from it, piercing them with knife-like clarity. It is total self-destruction; you are your own villain.

And on that too the most fearful thing is that you’re all alone. There is no one to save you. Heroes not found. The only one who can save you is you yourself. But you don’t have the strength to get up, to do anything at all to save yourself. A cacophony rings in your head, making your ears pop in the silence itself.

You stop.

You stop trying. You stop floundering around like a fish out of water grasping for help and self-recovery. You lie unmoving on this reality’s cold hard ground. You give up.

You may not consider yourself perfect. But you’re worth it. You deserve love and kindness like any other soul on this earth. But most of all, you deserve your own love and kindness.

You seemingly lose the fight.

But you don’t.

You open your eyes to find you’re still breathing. You can move your limbs although your body still feels numb. Your mind is blank and going around empty circles. There is something delicate blooming in your chest. You feel it enveloping your soul like a warm embrace you yearned for all this time. It is brilliant like a starburst but it feels soft and warm like a happy memory. It is hope; a chance, a light in the darkness for a better tomorrow for yourself.

You’re alive. And every moment you are breathing, dispelling assurance of your life in this world, you are giving the gift of a better tomorrow to yourself. You may not consider yourself perfect. But you’re worth it. You deserve love and kindness like any other soul on this earth. But most of all, you deserve your own love and kindness. Times may seem rough right now, but there is so much out there in the world. Places to go far more beautiful than the ones you thought were magnificent, not just physically; your mind has lands to explore. This life, delicate and beautiful like a string of gold yarn, may get tangled sometimes to create a whole mass of difficulty, but if the knots are undone slowly but surely, the threads can be used to create something breathtaking.