I’m hopeful. In this age of breaking up on text messages, destroying towns with drones and reducing the population by the dozen I still have hope, its instilled in me like pollen in the buds of a blooming flower. Although it may seem (if looked at realistically) being hopeful in these dark and trying times should be a capital punishment but its not so I get away swiftly, yet not guilt free. I keep thinking, contemplating and wondering if I’m wired differently because somehow I don’t have the strength to tell someone it won’t be okay, because deep down somewhere I know it won’t but that doesn’t necessarily mean I believe it. As children, we’re resellient, we’re full of life and promise- we’re hopeful and maybe that’s why the monster under our beds couldn’t take away our innocence. And I guess with most of us, hope disappears and fades away with time like ink on an old parchment, and I wish I knew what that felt like for everytime I’m left undone, it seems to turn back and return only to set me up for disappointment once more. We’re caught in a limbo of lost dreams, Hope and I. We think we know who we are, but we don’t, and we can never be more wrong, and we only come to terms with ourselves when something crushes our spirits, robs us of our hopes and dreams and it is that quest to gain what is rightfully ours that defines us. The choices we make. We might be broken, we might not recognize the reflection in the rough seas, but we can relate to the crumpled coke can struggling to float; no matter how many times you toss it, no matter how far you aim for, it returns clinging and staggering on the shoulders of waves that crash on the shore with a vengeance, yet each time it makes it back it bears signs of fatigue and exhaustion, unlike when it made its debut and proved to the little boy who threw him into the dark bottomless pits in doubt of whether it shall make it back, that it will return and make its presence known, yet some day, a cynical teenager will grab hold of it and throw it with all the rage and might he can muster without a touch of hope or sense of belonging, and it won’t be heard from again.