“Hold onto hope if you got it / Don’t let it go for nobody / And they say that dreaming is free / But I wouldn’t care what it costs me”
-Paramore’s “26”
I think this whole post can be summed up in a few words: the struggle to find hope in all directions.
Through loss, I discovered the work that scars can do if we let them; how reassuring and kind they may be after we allow them to shape-shift into something new and useful amidst all the hurting. How they will carry us until every last one of them loses their legs and cannot sustain our weight. How we will be grateful that, among everything else, we were carried by something that defined us a bit this year. I think I’m still on that ride—making meaning out of things that are out of my control in order to allow them a safer passage through my brain.
There were many moments of radical courage and love, both of which give me so much damn hope, even in a year where it felt like I had none. There were weddings and tattoos, bright adventures to new places, so much coffee and writing, and smiles, too, along the way. But with the most courage I can muster, I have to say what is the most genuine with my heart: regardless of all that brought me learning and growth, what follows me is an incessant longing for the kind of hope that is impervious. Unbothered by external circumstances. Unabashed.
There’s only so many times I can write about something before it feels like a broken record, like a skipping beat on endless loop; a coming and a going but always more going going going.
It constantly feels like I haven’t reflected enough. Haven’t written enough. Haven’t explored those depths in such a way that allows me to move yet. The moving on, despite all of this going, feels stuck in an endless rain, endless mud that is just as much familiar as it is foreign to me.
I’ve been more intentional with my joy, and keeping close all the things that matter to me, that which doesn’t simultaneously bruise me over and over again. In that process, it’s felt like I’ve stopped doing things for other people just for the sake of making them happy. All of that left with very little for myself and I’m only just now, upon reflection of the last 365 days, recognizing as such. When we stop doing things for others just for the sake of doing things for them, we realize just how much we were doing, how far we were going, how deep the water is that we tread to show up for others before ourselves. Maybe that’s why it’s felt few and far between; I am born over and over again every time I cannot find the light at the end of this unnamed tunnel I’m traveling through. With that birth, I am seeing my whole life on slow-motion replay; every excruciating detail laid side by side to one another so as to introduce two family members who haven’t met yet.
I can’t quite put my fingers on the exact moments of lacking hope. I’ve always been able to do that—moments of pure heartbreak or draining or lackluster bravery. This time, not so much. It’s an overall air settling on what my life has been this year.
With my age has come a hardening to the world. I’ve allowed this lack of hope to seep into me and dictate the manner in which I am able to open up to others. Always encouraging them to open but the moment it’s turned back to me, I’m quiet. I don’t know the exact moment when I realized this was happening but I can tell you that I’ve missed out on some of the very best opportunities to know others and be known by others as a result.
I say all of this to come clean to anyone who saw me as something different. I know I’ve let some people down, and for that, I’m (endlessly saying) sorry. For those who saw me as someone stronger than what I am or what I’ve been, I won’t cover it up any longer. I’m trying to feel warm in a world that sometimes feels like there aren’t enough covers to go around.
There were fleeting moments that enveloped me. Moments of unassured respite, ready to walk out the door at any moment. In many of these moments, it felt as if I was going to be choosing to leave them. Like it was all my own undoing, my own coiling. “I did this to myself,” I’d whisper aloud many times this year. “You’d think it’s what I wanted.”
Some things I’ve learned this year:
(I know this feels list-y. Stick with me for a second. This felt like the most simple way to put it.)
1- Everyone will have an opinion of what you do, and (sometimes wrongly) by extension, who you are. One of the easiest things for observers of our lives to do is make conclusions about who we are because of the mistakes we’ve made. For the most part, they’ll be wrong.
2- Writing has always been my avenue out of it all. Every problem, every heartbreak, every bruise I accumulate—writing is the most healing practice. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not. But creating sets of bones, of skin—flesh coming alive—is what builds the road of healing. Every time.
3- Showing up for one another will be the most radical thing we can do. For my students, for my family, for those I love the most, it’ll be what people need the most.
4- Storytelling is sacred. Follow it.
5- In the moments when we feel the most alone or when we’re going through something that is isolating, know that leaning into it will be what gives us permission to come undone and sew ourselves back up. It’s always going to hurt. But it must hurt before it heals.
6- There is nothing in this world that can replace the love that a really good friend offers. A love that is timeless and priceless and unbothered by who the president is or what pants you’re wearing or how many times you’ve made a mistake. The folks that stick around despite your moments (weeks, months) of waning, those are the folks that you want to be around. Those that will advocate for you when you’re not in the room, the ones that will dig their heels into the ground, those are the ones. Cherish the hell out of their magnificence. Encourage their hearts. Root for them. They’ll be doing the same for you.
7- There will be moments in time when you’ll be seen by others and you won’t really know what to do with them. You’ll go into every interaction with every intention of holding yourself together, and before you know it, all of your seams have unraveled. Just save yourself the trouble and let them see you. However brief of a moment it is, it’ll be a moment you both remember. Whether it’s an old friend or new, being seen widens your capacity to live and feel and most of all, love.
Who really knows what 2018 will bring? I’ll sit in a coffeeshop somewhere near home in a year’s time and wonder how I got so lucky, why I made that decision, how I let that person come into my life, or subsequently, how I let them leave. I’ll wonder how I got through that week and I’ll scrape hope from the bottom of my favorite moments. I’ll probably write more poetry and send it off to startup literary magazines. Maybe I won’t write poetry at all? Maybe I won’t buy blankets warm enough? Maybe I won’t know what to do with all the blankets I do have?
Endless questions and endless possibilities. I’ll surprise myself with what I do and don’t do. I hope that I find every reason to love, every reason to show up for people when they least expect it, and every reason to write what scares me the most. More than anything: brazen hope.
R. Francis Williford 