Clouds & Hope

At first glance, a nineteen-year-old talking about life struggles and mental health issues would seem nothing but ignorant. The cliché image of a self-obsessed young adult floods the minds of those before us, and we as a generation are unlikely to alter that. So, what do we do? Play into that simulacrum? Or break it?

I like to think of sadness, anger, and frustration as clouds. They come along, can fill the entire sky, blocking out everything above. Sometimes they can stick around for days, weeks even, but they will disappear eventually. What’s left after they leave? Clear skies, radiating sunlight, happiness. Clouds come and go, just like these waves of negative emotions, but with a little hope, that sky will clear, and happiness will return. It can be so difficult to find the hope that the sky will clear, sometimes it feels like it’s non-existent. But trust me, it will never leave you, you just need to look for it. Never stop looking for it.

I remember times in my life where it felt like that sky would never clear, clouds would just roll on through. Unfortunately, I gave up on finding the hope that it soon passes. I felt like the world was trying to swallow me and there was nothing I could do about it about it which leading me to spiral. It felt like God’s was just throwing shit at me repeatedly, expecting me to get back up. But I gave up. In my head I came to the conclusion that maybe the one way I could stop these clouds was if I was gone. God couldn’t throw shit at me if I wasn’t around. This idea tumbled around in my head for weeks until I got sick of the world and made my decision. I was going to disappear. I got myself ready, ready to leave this world. But then it happened. I found it. My phone buzzed in my pocket; it was hope.

Hope will come in thousands of different forms. Mine was people, friends, family. At your lowest, hope will shine through, trust me. My hope showed me that I was significant, I had people on this planet that cared for me. I owe my life to my hope, literally. Since hope found me, life has been nothing but up hill and I am so lucky for this. Maybe one day I will find myself feeling that hope has disappeared again, but I will come back and read this, remind myself of how my hope found me.

I want you to walk away after reading this and find your hope, the motivation for you to keep going. If you are like me and your hope is a person, tell them. Tell them that they are the reason your life is cloudless, tell them that you love them, tell them that you never want to lose them. I want you to do this because I guarantee they will not know this, and they should. Everyone should know that you are someone’s hope.

Please keep going. You are incredible. Never forget that.

Don’t Stop.