Hope,
I hope it doesn't rain today. I hope Kylie's new album is good, I hope bob smith wins pop factor. I hope my parcel comes. I hope I don't burn the cake. I hope it's not to far. I hope the shop is still open.
Hope: a word that is easily tossed into conversation, an idly wish.
According to Collins dictionary:
Hope,
Definitions
noun
(sometimes plural) a feeling of desire for something and confidence in the possibility of its fulfilment ⇒ his hope for peace was justified, their hopes were dashed
a reasonable ground for this feeling ⇒ there is still hope
a person or thing that gives cause for hope
a thing, situation, or event that is desired ⇒ my hope is that prices will fall
See not a hope
verb
(transitive; takes a clause as object or an infinitive) to desire (something) with some possibility of fulfilment ⇒ we hope you can come, I hope to tell you
(intransitive) often foll by for to have a wish (for a future event, situation, etc)
(transitive; takes a clause as object) to trust, expect, or believe ⇒ we hope that this is satisfactory
Synonyms of Hope: Utopia, achievement, ambition, anticipation, aspiration, assumption, belief, bright side, buoyancy, castles in air, concern, confidence, daydream, dependence, desire, endurance, expectancy, expectation, faith, fancy, fool's paradise, fortune, gain, goal, greedy glutton, hopefulness, light at end of tunnel, optimism, pipe dream, promise, promised land, prospect, reliance, reverie, reward, rosiness, sanguineness, security, stock, thing with feathers, wish
My favourite of these synonyms are Belief, Faith, Hopefulness, Security and Wish.
As a sufferer of OCD and as a child of a parent with a mental health disorder, these words often come to mind, not as a idle thought or a whimsical gesture, but as tools, great tools to aid awareness and recovery.
Don't get me wrong, I too use them on a whim, "I wish it would stop raining" "I hope hubby remembers the bread" and so forth, but I also value the real meaning of these words and what they can achieve. I have sat in the darkness, praying and wishing and hoping. I have been to the edge, at times feeling like I may literally tip over the edge, willingly, just to get it over and done with.
I have lost hope and worshipped despair, had self harm and low worth as my idols, prayed for suffering instead of recovery when I believed there was no way out. I have been to the very depths of my ocd, fought against that demon and then willingly surrendered my power to it.
To lose Hope is to lose faith, faith in yourself and your strength. To lose Hope is to lose yourself, and I almost did.
It took a long time to climb back up, to be honest I'm still climbing. I know I have a long way to go, and some days I slip (sometimes willingly, indulgently) back a little way. But I still climb, I use all my weapons to fight against it, and one of those weapons is Hope.
Some of you may already know that I spent a little time locked in a mental health unit. I had given up, couldn't see anyway out of the suffering and so selfishly made the decision to end it all, for myself and those around me. Being admitted to the hospital I couldn't see the point in everyone's concern and time, after all, I was worth nothing! But day by day I began to realise something, people weren't giving up on me, staff and family and friends kept going, kept pushing, because they had faith. They had hope, hope for me, hope I would see the light, faith I would start to fight. And their hope and belief slow became contagious, spreading through me until I could see it too. I started to see that I could grow stronger, that I could fight back. It gave me Hope. So much so, that on my first day home I bought a necklace engraved with the three most important words I knew:
Hope, Strength, Knowledge.
These 3 words have served me well, work as a reminder that there is always hope even if it's not your own, that you can always find strength even if you need to borrow it and that knowledge is important, knowledge of your illness, treatments and support available, but most importantly knowledge of yourself!
Hope is such a little word, sometimes even insignificant, but if you look closely you can see it everywhere, and where you don't see it you can bring it. So if someone you know has list hope please give them some of yours, you never know how much of a difference it can make!
My hope for myself is to eventually get better, my hope for you is that you take something from this and pass on the hope.
This Blog is part of a blog hop, of a greater exploration of the word HOPE in the world of OCD, please go to http://obsessivelycompulsivelyyours.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/the-first-ocd-blog-hop/
And see what my good friend Bellsie and others have to say on the subject of Hope.
