For the Hope of It All
I think I have always loved things a little too deeply.
I am the kind of person who let songs play louder than they should, especially the ones that feel like remembering. The ones that sound like summer slipping through your fingers. The ones that hurt in a soft but beautiful way.
And if I’m honest, that is probably what I have been doing for a long time, holding on to things that were never meant to stay. Because I have always wanted love that doesn’t make me brace myself so badly it almost feels embarrassing to say out loud. I have wanted a partnership that feels like being chosen without having to fight for it. I have wanted a place where I could finally set something down and trust that it would still be there when I came back.
But instead, I learned how to carry. I learned how to look fine when I wasn’t. I learned how to smile through the ache, how to make peace with being the one who holds everything together, and how to keep going even when something inside me was quietly unraveling. There is a kind of loneliness in being the strong one. People call it resilience, but sometimes it feels more like being left with no other choice.
And still, I keep hoping. Maybe that’s the most fragile thing about me — that after everything, I still believe in tenderness. I still believe that some people are meant to meet us gently. I still believe there are moments ahead that will feel like standing in warm light after a long storm. And I still believe that not everything meant to hurt me will succeed.
But hope is a strange thing. It doesn’t always arrive like a miracle. Sometimes it just sits in you quietly, like a song you can’t stop replaying even though it makes your chest ache. Sometimes it’s just the decision to keep your heart open after it has already been disappointed.
That’s the part no one tells you: that hope can be a heartbreak in slow motion. And yet, I still choose it! Over and over and over again.
I choose the possibility that the peace I keep handing out so freely will one day find its way back to me, the belief that grief does not get the final word, the hope that one day I will not have to be so tough to survive, and the dream that I will be loved in a way that feels like summer you never knew was ending.
So, I’ll keep letting the music say what I cannot. I’ll keep hoping for the kind of peace that feels like finally coming in from the rain.
And I’ll keep believing, even now, in the hope of it all.
