The Creation of Hope.
Your experience is your own to do with what you will.
You can fight with it, dance with it, run from it, or see it.
As Nuke says, “you decide!”
It was easy for me to be a victim. I have numerous examples throughout my life of people victimizing me. Heck, yesterday, on Thanksgiving, my own mother, her first conversation with her granddaughter in months/years; said to my daughter, “Your mom was such a drama queen.”
I love my mom, in spite of the painful sting. If anything, I love her even more. She keeps me humble. It took me years to figure out that she learned to react to her world by dismissing her own experience, thus dismissing mine. It was the only way we could survive in the hell we lived in. You see, when I was a child, (until I became a mother), people often saw me as a puppy eyed, naïve, innocent, quiet, mousy, little girl. On the inside, I was the most humble, nonjudgmental, compassionate, empathic, observer who was learning to translate into words what I was seeing in my mind. Either way, I was often very vulnerable and readily willing to dismiss my own experience.
I could see this play out in the associations I have with medical care. Whenever I became deathly ill, or stepped on a broken bottle (resulting in a 3 inch wide 1 inch deep cut in my heel), all my parents first response was to sigh a signal of annoyance about my clumsy nature or propensity for catching illnesses. Then they would complain about either the bill my resulting illness/injury would cost them, or the white towel being ruined because I bled all over it (having been the closest cloth I could find without bleeding all over the carpet). It was not until I became a parent that I realized where those sighs came from. My parents all struggled with scarcity to the point where they stopped having compassion and only saw the dollar number. For me, I was left with a lifetime of dismissing medical health issues for myself, culminating into enduring chronic pain for at least a decade now.
Of course, my parents do not consciously remember most of these things – at least not from my perspective. They might remember these things from their own perspective; as a parent who is constantly unsure of themselves, unsure of the world around them, experiencing constant reminders of uncertainty. In the collective environment I grew up in, I was inadvertently best friends with uncertainty, unknowing, and unworthiness. My own personal motto since my father told me to “never run away from my problems”, has been instead to “embrace the horror”. It was my own personal adaptation to an environment of unknowing.
During my first meeting with the boss man, (when I introduced him to the model), he said to me, “Embrace the Ambiguity.” That was when I knew that I was among my bee people (like the Blind Melon song). My unique background cultivated my skill at navigating darkness, ambiguity, or unknowing. In other words, me as a “drama queen” became someone who holds deep meaning in the world, adept at supporting others in finding their own meaning. The more unknowing I am surrounded by, the more creative I become.
From my experience of the unknowing, I became (and am continually) a creator of my own story. I grow from the beautiful darkness, feeling brightest when it surrounds me. I experience it as a place of solitude, as if I am at the end of existence; where the only creature left in a vast vacuum of dark space is me and my own light. In that place, my memory of existence is the only thing left. So, I hold on as clearly as possible, to every moment I get to see, witness, experience, feel.
My partner calls me the hope flower at the end of Pandora’s box. I always loved the Sailor Moon story instead. Either way, they all elude to stories we have been telling each other since the dawn of time.
The story of the creation of hope.
Hope is brightest in the darkest of moments.
Ultimately, hope is born from our struggles.
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