Surviving Wont Be The Hardest Part

I have never been shy about sharing the uncanny, witty interpretation of hope I have. The stumbling, ruffled, unprecedented hope I believe in. In fact, a while back I stood in front of a church full of people with a microphone and declared how I believe, "Hope is a relentless bastard". I also often write how my hope seems to be walking around without its head and continuously bumping into walls. Imagery people, its everything. Yes, hope is blind but do not be mistaken it is very aware of whats it stands in front of. Hope is pretty much a bad ass. 

Hope is important and most of the time anything important and/or significant is at one point or at other times entirely painful. Sad AND happy is the paradoxical normal of the universe. Pain and healing go together. Hope being painful is not always the truth in every situation but in a deprived, suffocated, and overwhelming period of ones journey it can be. 

Hope being painful is for the people who have learned how to make a home inside the storm. Not out of choice but by severe necessity. Hope at first is motivating but eventually hope just gets annoying and annoying I mean too painful to bring around. Hope is the dream of it getting better. Hope is looking forward to the brighter tomorrow. But what happens when tomorrow doesn't get better? After a while its too difficult to keep believing because its much too tiring. Life can make you feel like a fool too. When you are in a upheaval to get your life to a safe place dreaming ahead can be helpful. Hoping to ones highest ability for a change of course can be/is a helpful tool. I do not discredit this but also in a long journey there is a point where it becomes easier to just continue moving instead of enthusiastically hoping. 

That was something I wrote up a month or two ago. I must have had an extra rough week. But I must have fell asleep before i could finish. I did say something though that struck a cord in me after reading this today. 

Enthusiastically hoping.

Is that how hope works? Is hope only enthusiastic? I think that is how its advertised to us. Hope is the shiny and bright during the bleak. So does that mean that hope can't be be dreary, weak, maybe a bit dirty or confused? Am I doing this hope thing all wrong then??  

Hope and Grace are the most powerful forces in the universe. Do you think they would conform to one specific definition? Nah, thats way too boring and exclusive. Hope fights to stay with us. Hope fights to stay alive in us. Hope grows and shrinks in the same way our lives fluctuate but it will not wither and die. No matter how determined you are to believe it has. 

Continuously through the extreme, rough and bumpy through the impossible we think now how the fuck am I going to get through THIS? but we do. No matter what way we went about it. Wearily, quietly, kicking and screaming, crawling, angrily, gracefully, quickly,slowly dammit we got through it and then its just right along into the next adventure. Whatever the hell that may be. 

Hope doesn't sit anything out. Hopes attached itself to us forever. It becomes whatever it needs to be in order to stay within us. So no, enthusiastically isn't the only way hope comes. Hope is the badass in the leather jacket and its also the weary kind friend. 

I think I maxed out the number of times one can use the word hope in an essay but zero fucks given. 

This week was something. At work I was blamed for all the things being wrong by another receptionist which caused anger and frustration and even insecurity. Then out of work I am overwhelmed with bills and exasperated by how even homelessness can't escape the wrath of bills. The lottery would solve this. Hah, wishful thinking. But we also got offered a blanket yesterday morning by a woman in a military uniform while preparing to head to our destinations for the day and the fast food restaurant we frequent gave us 2 free things the past two days. We were able to cook with our camping stove today and eat a "home" cooked meal. Percy got really tummy sick this week and cars broke down. My best friend lost her best friend-her doggy and I wept while leaving work to grieve with her. I got a house sitting opportunity in May and I was ecstatic upon hearing the news but also grief stricken because I'd love to be in a home by then. January is almost gone and I'm terrified. Take care of us 2018.

Until next Friday.

-Analaura

Song of the week: "26" - Paramore

Hey, 2018s Here

Hey there 2018.

Cute puppy-AKA-Penny

Although I am not one for resolutions I did promise myself that this year I would begin to write again. I seemed to be a gray blur in 2017 and maybe that was just my healing process for that moment in time but these past few days my soul has been tugging at me like a 4 year old on a mission to write again. My conscious blowing up at me because it knows that I'd feel better if I just wrote something. Ah! I wanted to come up with a title or an idea that I could center my thoughts around but then I remembered that was the very reason I felt I couldn't write in 2017. 2017 was the year that all the crap and turmoil thats always been hidden under the rug got uncovered and so of course this caused the world to believe the world has turned to shit when in reality all of these things were already there and happening. It was a year of eye opening. It was a year where people discovered how far their compassion for "the issues" would really take them. It was the year people rose up to activism and others turned their backs and stayed silent. It was the year when people finally made those who are silent realize they are on the side of the oppressor. That there is no limbo when it comes to justice for black and brown lives, for women and so on. It was the uncovering that the world needed to begin a better revolutionized healing process.

I have a job now. I work part time in a medical office. I like it although it hasn't came without work place drama I'm actually quite impressed with how I've done and how I have been handling being homeless and working at the same time. Some days it takes everything in me to breathe and not to start crying but others are a breeze and I am able to clock in, do my job, clock out and leave it all behind. Some days my mental health is on the brink of giving out so I'm grateful that I am able to bring one of my dogs to work to hug when I feel like being alive is just way too damn much to handle. Some days I work at the office and then later as a nanny. I'm tired and empty and overwhelmed all at the same time but I keep going because what the fuck else am I going to do. Food for us and food for the dogs and gas for the car and laundry to wash and storage and insurance and cell phone won't happen by itself. My transmission died during thanksgiving and that caused a whole bunch of expense. I brought my grandma and had her stay with us. We were able to supply a hotel room for 2 weeks or so before money was gone and the car was broken so she stayed with us through new year. I was actually relieved to have her with us where we could make sure she was fed and interacted with and showered and taken care of. Shes losing her memory now and at home unfortunately she can't provide herself with the self care she needs. Its a very complicated situation so even though she drove us all insane and we were almost always arguing at the end of the day my shoulders felt a little lighter knowing that my abuela was being taken care of properly.

I stopped going to church in 2017. I think I finally came to realize pushing myself to go when it drains me isn't taking care of myself. Plus, my spirituality was dragging just like my situation. I was visiting with a friend from San Francisco during Christmas who had asked me why i no longer attended and I eventually figured out that I felt crippling loneliness when I visited church. That is not the reaction you are supposed to feel when going to a place like that although to be fair I feel quite alone in the world too but you never wanna willingly place yourself in a place that creates that feeling. Not to get too real or dark on you here. You still there? I dont come into contact with a lot of homeless young brown women like myself. Not to say that they aren't out there but the lifeline I wield hasn't given me that gift...yet.

This is more of an update post than a reflective one and I am quite okay with that now. I think I would put so much pressure on myself to make a great reflective post every single time that I didn't even wanna try anymore. I realize now that I'm not going to get more than a couple views and that feedback just isn't happening but regardless I need to write. Besides having it out in the open is so subversive.and freeing that I'm going to learn how to make it feel enough.

I am making it a plan to have a new post every Friday and I hope those of who you reading now will check in, read and reflect with me.

I suppose life would really suck if I didn't take advantage to grow and learn from all the pain. The day I decided to use my pain as fuel instead of an anchor is the day I created a million and one opportunities.

Healing is everyday and chosen and uncomfortable and difficult and hard work but so is the alternative.  At least healing gives you freedom.

-Analaura