Hopelessly Hopeful

A Story by Tris

This was what freedom looked like, the wind in her hair and the sun on her cheeks, or the sun that would have been on her cheeks were it not such a cloudy day.
Not that it mattered to her, as she came round to face me, preparing once again to circle the garden, I caught her eye, so innocent, filled with the kind of reckless abandon known only to the young and ignorant, they shone with a light that seemed to call her to throw caution to the wind, “faster, go faster” that mischievous gleam seemed to whisper, and she did.
The music of her laughter carried towards me on the winds of change, and wrapped, noose like, around the shredded mess that was my heart.
My baby girl, she was so beautiful, so filled with life and joy... if only it could last. However, unlike her, I knew it couldn’t, I knew that this, like so many moments of happiness in her life was to be painfully short lived, and all too difficult to let go of once it inevitably passed.
Inevitability
This one word seemed to encompass her life so fully... so painfully.
Yet she smiled, and laughed, completely unaware of her surroundings and unconcerned for her future. If only I could live like that.
My life had come to feel like some kind of twisted count down; I lived in a permanent state of distress, unable to relax, constantly anticipating the drop of the other shoe, the crushing weight of the next wave the detonation of the next bomb. I lived my life terrified of what she did not know, what I could not tell her.
Perhaps one day, looking back on this it would, like so many things often do, seem as though the answer should have been perfectly clear from the beginning, and I will be able to laugh at myself for having been so simple minded as not to have seen it. Maybe one day when all of this is passed... maybe not.
Sometimes, late at night, I lie in bed and feel as though I will never take a calm breath again. The most ironic thing of all is I would gladly spend the rest of my life unable to breathe freely suffering through hacking coughs and laboured breaths if she didn’t have to.
Somehow though, while I sit here, suffocated by the weight of it all, fearing the next fallout, she seems so peaceful, happy to ignore everything else, including the hopelessness of her situation, happy to enjoy the small, simple pleasure that life has decided to offer her.
While I sit here, not brave enough to see any light in the dark of our lives, she is happy to ride her bike. Seeing this, brings me both shame, at my inability to see any sort of silver lining, and something else, a strange sort of feeling that has become somewhat foreign to me. Seeing her, watching my little girl screaming with laughter gives me back something I thought I’d lost a long time ago, it gives me a fragile seed of hope. A seed to plant in my chest or to shove away for fear of being let down, normally this little seed would never see the light of day... yet something in me, in this moment, decides to nurture it instead, to allow that little seed to take root, to grow and to flourish into a ray of sunshine that even the clouds and incoming storm can’t hide. For the first time in the longest time, I allow myself to hope against all hopelessness, that tomorrow just may be better...