Hope;

Hope (noun): a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen; (verb): want something to happen or be the case.

Project Semicolon: “The goal of the project is to restore hope and confidence in people who are troubled by addiction, depression, self-harm, and suicide. The non-profit encourages these people to draw or tattoo a semicolon on their wrist. The semicolon symbolizes that the difficulties they face are not the end but a new beginning. A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” By encouraging people to share their marks and stories, Project Semicolon seeks to instill hope and open up a dialogue about mental health.” – Davey Hoen

How many times have you had hope? How many times have you lost hope? For my case, it's endless. There are many reasons why the word hope stands out so particularly in my vocabulary. First, it's for someone very close to me. Someone I once knew but lost 4 years to something that ruins your life, some forever, and some for a period of time. The last time I actually knew you was 4 years ago. Before the lies, the cheating, and the stealing. My heart aches for you. You may hate me because I've had to make one of the toughest decisions of my life by separating myself from you and for not being able to watch you abuse your body when you only have one body that is not meant to be taken for granted, but that's okay. Because even though we haven't spoken in a while, I love you deeply. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about you. I forgive you. And if you're reading this right now, I miss you all the time, therefore, I have hope. I have hope that one day I'll have the brother back that I once knew. The real you. I have hope in you.

Second, for about 3 years depression has had an extreme grip on me. I was completely trapped in chain after chain and no matter what I tried, I felt like I couldn't make it go away. And depression isn't something that you can just make go away. It's hard to make those who've never gone through such an extreme experience to understand it all. There's pain, feeling lost, empty, alone, sad, and all loss of the ability to want to have fun. Everything I once loved wasn't exciting anymore. But, I never truly gave up on myself. As many times as I wanted to and as many dark moments I was in, I never truly gave up. There was always something inside of me that kept pushing me forward. It was hope from God. No, I'm not fully recovered but I can surely say that having hope in myself, I was able to push through, even when I didn't want to, which was more than a handful of times. The impact God has had on my life is so grand that there's not enough good things in this world that I could do that would ever be able to repay him. He's given me hope, in everything. As long as I have hope, I can get through anything and everything. I may deal with anxiety and depression for the rest of my life along with the longing for wanting my true little brother back, but one thing is for sure. I will never give up hope.

Life has thrown out of the blue obstacles at me this past couple of months, but I won't let depression take over my life. I have depression. Depression doesn't have me. It may take days, months, or years, but there is light at the end of the tunnel;

xoxo, tori