for the hope of it all

being back after a month feels strange

here i am, a month later and still none the wiser. time has stretched, folded, and collapsed in on itself, and yet i remain in the same place; circling the same thoughts, rehearsing the same worries, rehearsing them so often they begin to feel like rituals. i thought maybe by now i’d stumble into some revelation, some small clarity that would loosen the knot in my chest, but nothing comes. nothing ever does.

everyone insists uncertainty is normal, that doubt is a companion of youth, that someday i’ll look back on this phase and laugh at how tightly i clung to it. but i don’t want to laugh at it in the future; i want to stop suffocating in it now. this insistence that everything will make sense later only deepens the divide. because what if it never does? what if this confusion is not a temporary fog but the very landscape of life?

the future does not unfurl before me like an open sky. it crouches over me like a ceiling too low to stand beneath, pressing down, forcing me to stoop. i try to imagine myself five years ahead, ten years ahead, and all i can see is the constant reshaping of the same questions: will i have done enough? will i be enough? will the choices i’ve made today calcify into regrets tomorrow? every possibility branches into another doubt, another rehearsal of failure. fear, rather than potential seems to fester and grow out of control.

interactions, too, become battlegrounds. every word feels like a weapon aimed back at me once released. i replay conversations endlessly, dissecting tones and pauses, convinced i’ve been misunderstood, convinced i’ve revealed too much or too little. there is no relief in speaking when speech itself becomes an autopsy waiting to happen. people talk about the freedom of expression, but where is the freedom when every syllable is a trap i set for myself?

i tell myself i want things to be different. but desire does not rewrite reality. it doesn’t rearrange people’s hearts or soften their edges. wishing is not an act of power; it is an act of futility, a quiet declaration of helplessness. i wait for the world to be kinder, and each day confirms that kindness is a rare anomaly, not a rule. it appears in flashes, in glimpses, but never long enough to be trusted. and when i hold out my hands, it slips through, reminding me that expectation is just another word for disappointment delayed.

there’s this common argument that hope is essential, that without it we collapse. but what if hope is simply another way of prolonging suffering? to hope is to place faith in something that refuses to arrive. it is a bargain i never agreed to, one that demands patience without ever offering proof of reward. to live on hope is to live in hunger. to live in hunger is to constantly gnaw on yourself.

there is no lesson. there is no breakthrough waiting to be uncovered if i just endure long enough. the repetition is not a test, it is the substance of life itself. the doubt persists and refuses to get resolved. people disappoint in the same old, familiar ways. every day is a continuation of the same uncertainty in a slightly different costume.

and what unsettles me most is how easily others dismiss this. they frame despair as a passing weather, but mine feels like climate. they frame indecision as an opportunity, but mine feels like paralysis. their optimism is not comforting; it is alienating. it suggests that i am somehow failing twice — first at living, and second at believing that living will improve.

so i remain here, unchanged in the only way that matters. not wiser, not calmer, not more assured. just circling, rehearsing, doubting. maybe tomorrow i will feel the same. maybe next year too. maybe always. and perhaps the cruelest truth is not that i don’t know how to escape this loop, but that there may be no escape at all.

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