Reaching Out for Hope

I was walking down the hall, late for class (again) when I tripped over my own shoelace and dropped everything. It was just so typical. I was always fumbling through everything, never quite right, never on time, never special, never ENOUGH and here I was making a complete ass out of myself again. I was the most useless specimen of a human that ever lived.

Feeling even more defeated, I bent down and tried to gather up my books and my homework (that would probably gain me a failing grade anyway) and no one stopped to help. I don’t think even one person even saw me there, they just walked around me, stepping on my books as I tried to reach around to gather them up. People with their perfect lives, why would they bother to stop for me?

I actually left a couple of books and papers there on the floor. I felt utterly defeated and it just didn’t matter anymore. I was a failure and what did it fucking matter if I lost my textbook? I probably wouldn’t pass enough classes to graduate and no one would miss me there, either.

I had been sinking so low lately that it just didn’t matter. I didn’t say it outloud, but my brain was heading right towards the ultimate kind of giving up.

I barely made it into my seat at the time and the teacher reminded us that our final was today. The class groaned, but it was half hearted. I knew that everyone else was far more prepared than I was. It was at that moment I realized that one of my papers I’d left in the hall were my notes to use during the test.

‘FUCK!’ I thought. I looked at the girl next to me. Her name was 'Hope' (of course it was)

Miss Perfect, Miss popular. She had everything, including the perfect grades, the perfect life… I decided right then that I would copy her test. I was sick of being the failure. If I was going to leave this world, I wasn’t going to go out a complete loser. I ached for even a tenth of the perfection of her life. If I could just have a tiny piece of that, surely I could make it.

The teacher called for silence and passed out the test. I leaned to the side and peeked at her paper. Confusion set upon me. She wasn’t even doing the test at all. She was just scribbling words in her notebook the test ignored completely. I tried to read her nearly illegible words, a hasty, almost angry scrawl.

“I give up, I quit. I don’t want to live anymore. Everyone thinks my life is perfect and I can’t take it anymore.” I watched the ink spread across the paper and realized that a teardrop had fallen on the paper. She was crying silent tears, right here in class. I couldn’t believe it.

Compassion washed over me in that moment. Maybe the first time I had thought outside of my own problems in god knows how long. I felt a spark of hope as I scribbled a note and passed it to her. She took it with a look of surprise. I had never talked to her before.

“I understand.” was all I said, but she looked at me with a question in her eyes. I smiled back at her. An awkward, uncomfortable smile that I hadn’t used in along while, but it worked. A tiny flicker of something that I recognized clear down to my bones appeared in her eyes…and then, a tentative smile.

And suddenly, somehow, a tendril of hope bloomed. For both of us.

Five minute freewrite Prompt Courtesy of @mariannewest

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The 3 Day Engagement: Our Real Life Crazy Love Story

My Husband's Perspective: The Engagement

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