About Hope

In several different places recently, I have seen the quote from Emily Dickinson, that “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul…”  It has never been a quote that I liked very much.  So much of hope has come to nothing, that it seems to give more pain than comfort, yet, I know that without any hope there is nothing.   How does one know when it is reasonable to hope, or when hope will sustain rather than set one up to be devastated by disappointment?

Hopes that I had for my marriage came to nothing, but I have long suspected that those hopes were always unlikely to be fulfilled by any success.  One day recently when I came into contact with the ExMan, I was struck by noticing his scent.  It wasn’t a cologne or a detergent, or anything bad, but the combination of his preferred products and his own personal smell.  I felt suddenly as though it could be twelve years ago at this same time of year, early March, when we might be driving to visit his grandmother in Newark, DE.  At that time I was just beginning to realize that I was pregnant, while also beginning to suspect that this was probably not a promising relationship for me.

I was twenty-seven then, and knew that I could certainly have a child by myself if it came to that, but was that a life I wanted any more than I wanted to jump into marriage?  ExMan wanted us to stay together, which seemed to be a good sign.  I had hope that we would flounder a bit but find our way.  People don’t always go into marriage completely prepared for what it entails, do they?  That was what I was thinking.  Also, being more inclined to books and quiet days at home than hanging out with groups of people, I had never been one to date a lot, or to think that there were likely to be many men who would suit me better.

So, I hoped.  That was what I called it.  But hope seemed to mean ignoring a lot: realizing that ExMan drank, a lot (at the time I wasn’t drinking at all, even before I got pregnant).  As in, unless he was heading out to work, he was usually quite drunk or high or both.  He took extra medicine for his diabetes, so that he could drink more without having symptoms of high blood sugar.  I never saw any of his friends that they were not high.  I accepted that he didn’t want me to meet his family, apart from his grandmother.  He hadn’t spoken to his mother in years.  I am well aware that there are families where one does best to sever ties.  What I found out after getting married was that he didn’t want me to meet his family because he knew it would scare me.  Most of his male relatives were in jail or dead.

I didn’t understand that the reason I always seemed to do the wrong thing when ExMan was stressed was because anything I did would have been the wrong thing:  it wasn’t my imagination that he had been ambiguous about his expectations.  There was always a result that gave him the excuse to lose his temper, to tell me I was stupid or MUST have known I was supposed to do the opposite, and just didn’t care.

That was the beginning.  The arguments were, I figured, the rocky beginning of any two people living together, with the added pressure of having no money and a baby on the way.  Our backgrounds were completely different and I was determined that with perseverance and open-mindedness we would get through the rocky parts and work together.  It sounds great, but could never work while I had the blinders on to the classic red flags of abusive behavior, and alcoholism and drug addiction.   What I saw and what I could handle never matched, and got better and better at saying one thing (I’m fine; I’m not angry; it’s not that bad) while feeling something else, until I was rarely certain what I did think or feel.

I have learned that my problem is not with hope, but with denial.  ExMan has always loved me as much as he is able, I realize that much.  But the only way I could feel hope that we would work things out was by filtering out the insurmountable.  So, I have learned that hope has to look at things as they really are, because if it has its root in the lies we tell ourselves it is only a fiction, an escape.  It will never be able to “sing the tune without words, and never stop at all.”