Follow Your Passion: A Seamless Tumblr Journey
I know right now, with everything that's going on in the world, it feels like the night will last forever, it's darkness stretching out for years and years ahead. But I have to say that one day, the soft pull of life will tug at you. You'll find yourself sitting quietly in the summer months enjoying the warm rays and the birdsongs, maybe you plant some flowers or berrys. You'll laugh till your sides ache and your heart lightens. You'll make art and get paint on your clothes and on your carpet. You'll read books your friend recommend and gush over your favourite characters together, maybe you'll write your own. That's what's getting me through, that one day it will be summer, the days soft and I'll have my book finished in my hands and maybe someone will read it. Maybe they won't. But it's things like this, the soft things, that make everything worth it.
I stole a bible a few years ago, I browsed the shelfs not looking to steal but to pass the time and then I saw it, black cover and pages edged in gold. I wasn't religious, more agnostic or an atheist that dabbled in Buddhist ideas, I felt the Christian narrative or at least the one I heard about was always about who would pay. How jesus payed for your "sins", and if you didn't believe then you'll pay in the after life, so hold on to guilt and carry your strife , but I also knew that I wanted , needed something. I wasn't looking for misplaced shame only hope and I wanted to have it tangible in my hands.
So with my stomach empty and my shoes hole ridden, I ignored the fashion magazines with diet tips and beauty tricks and filled my emptyness with something close to hope, if only to cope. I grabbed it from the shelf and I left the store. I was too afraid to steal food , I didn't dare even with my hunger, but possibility of having something bigger than life to cling to on cold and lonely nights seemed worth the risk.
During that time I wasn't doing so well, my mother was drinking and taking drugs with her friends god only knows where and the cupboards where completely bare. I would wander around town, I would wait for the days to pass, I would wait for something to meet me in my loneliness. I wanted so desperately for something like god to reveal itself to me, my mother wasn't someone I could lean on and my father wasn't around so I think naturally I wanted something to believe in, to sustain me when food and family couldn't.
Last year my brother and I where almost homeless, we slept on the hard floor in a cold empty room for three years, we spent every day waiting. I would wait for the stores reduced items at the end of the day, wait for the sun to dry my clothes, I would walk for hours round and round, my shoes didn't last long, I tried ducktaping the soles but the pavement wore through that aswell. When I wasn't waiting outside food banks, staring at white walls or writing, I sometimes would visit the church in town. It's a cathedral and I still have no idea what denomination it's under, but I'd walk around and admire the marbal pillers and stain glass windows, I would try to remember how people hundreds near a thousand years ago carved angles into stone and placed their hope in something other than themselfs, that back then a church may have been the only place you could go if you had no where else. I reminded myself of all the people who would have prayed there, that would have stood where I stood and cried, wished and waited as I did. I would light a candle and I would wish for a better tomorrow, I wasn't asking jesus or a god, I was asking the universe, I was asking subconsciously myself to keep going.
What do you think of religion? (Are you religious?)
you don't have to post this or respond to this ( and I don't even know if this will get to you cause tumblr ask boxes are dumb), but I saw your Jan 12 post and I just wanted to tell you to hang in there. know that you are seen and cared for (even if it's just us randoms on tumblr). your number isn't getting pushed back. the line's just a little longer than you realize. the sun will come out for you soon <3
(p.s. feel free to ignore this if it makes you uncomfortable / you think it's useless, but I'm praying for you random tumblr stranger. )
This kind messege was hiding in my ask box amongst alot of troll asks and I'm so touched. Anon, thank you for this. I'll keep what you said in mind, I really appreciate you taking the time to send this, I'm sorry I found it so long after you sent it. It means alot, I'm asking the universe to send you joy and there's nothing random about you , you're very kind💛
Hope wins every time the sun peaks over the horizon after a long dark night, it softens the day and baths the ground, it warms the air and we breath easier and maybe our souls uncurl a little from that protective crouch we've grown used to, maybe we let our limbs loosen, maybe we let hope sink into our skin, maybe we let it melt our misery from within.
The bad news is that it sometimes feels never ending and apathy whispers into your ear that this numbness is peaceful and to just sink into it's depths.
The good news is that apathy is a cold filthy liar. They want you to drowned, but they don't know that happiness is always around the corner, and it will yank you out of the dark water. I swear one day you will laugh so hard your sides start splitting and the pain will leak out of you. I swear you will sing and dance and feel something other than heavy numbness, the sunrise is golden and it burns, it heats up your heart until you feel like there's something to live for and it's just on the horizon. Wait for it. Please.
I know I don't say it enough and we joke about depression and how loneliness is eating up our lives, but it will be okay. I promise you it will.
Let hope wrap you up in its gentle arms, let it never let you go.