Press On

Breaking Storm, Coast Of Maine (1894) Winslow Homer

All I thought I knew I now know I did not, do not, will not and cannot.

There's an enormous mystery masked and shrouded under the notion of some grand plan, divine design, a creator orchestrating from above who does whatever they want.

Prayer does not work because I tried it relentlessly, and my prayers fell on deaf skies and a truly invisible mighty high.

It consoled us all during that awful time. We were full of hope and longing for a different outcome, but when that fateful morning came, all hope was lost.

Hope faded into the dark backdrop of a despairing reality and scurried off to some distant place, taking with it our faith, our optimism, our joy, our glee, our enthusiasm, our zest for life.

It all went out with hope.

And irrespective of the hope that had coddled me, consoled me, and always idled around as an affirmation of something good looming somewhere nearby—that hope is now gone.

Its absence is substantive, affirmative, definitive, prolific, and profound.

That lack now fills the empty spaces that were once held together by hope.

The void is magnified by an unknowing that creeps into the corridors of my heart and makes it pound louder every time I go inward and acknowledge the horror that has transpired.

And with all of these feelings that continue to rush me in waves of grief and sorrow, I feel solemnly hopeless as I press on.

I dread being dreadful, but it's what has encapsulated me for nearly 11 months.

The world is no longer that luminous place where light and laughter walked hand in hand with inspiration, as it once was.

I think a new set of eyes gives you a new landscape with which you paint freely, and while all the colors of the rainbow and more hues are still there, only the dark, gloomy ones grab my attention, glaring at me as if to remind me of the sadness that fills my spatial surroundings.

My perspective of a bright, shiny reality is dashed and dimmed. The world feels dark, and my palette holds all the grays ever imagined and different shades of black and murky tones of blues with undertones of dank greens.

And as I look around, I see the world around me drying up as the spring leaves turn to dusky browns and harsh beige.

Yet somewhere beneath these new lenses, beneath this canvas of grays and shadows, I sense the faintest ember. Not hope—not yet—but perhaps its distant cousin: endurance. The colors haven't vanished from the world; they've only vanished from my sight. And though I cannot see them now through this veil of grief, I know they wait—patient and eternal—for the day when my eyes might, in some small way, begin to adjust to this new, altered light.