On hope

I don't know why the balloon is always red, but it is, and I can accept that without further question

Dear Writer,

Tomorrow, a friend of mine will be releasing a video project she’s been working on for a long time, one she asked me to be a part of, where the participants each select one scene in media that makes them feel hope. I wanted to do it. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It’s due tomorrow. The whole video. Written, performed, edited and uploaded.

Tomorrow.

I haven’t started.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’ve talked about it, and talking can be writing. Thinking can be writing. I’ve worked out some of what I have to say about it, mostly about why I can’t write about hope because I don’t understand my own relationship to hope but that ends up being what I have to say about hope… you know how it goes. Even if all you have is negative space, you can usually do something with that negative space.

So here I am on a Saturday morning. I always get my Dear Writers done at least the day before they go up. Not this week. Everything is at the last minute and honestly? I mean, I’m busy, but it’s nothing like it used to be, when I got so much more done in a week than I can even blink at now. I tell everyone else, “It’s trauma. It’s the cumulative effect of never really feeling safe. It’s the world. And then there’s the stress of every day life along with that, which was rough enough before the world caught on fire. Of course you can’t do what you used to do. All your energy is going to just making it through the day.”

And I know all of that to be true, but part of me still frets and would like reassurance that if the world wasn’t on fire, I’d be able to keep up the pace.

Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Because what is is and there’s no way around it.

So, today, I’m gonna combine the things. I’m going to write my essay, and have it double as this week’s Dear Writer. Will I get to record it and get it onto the playlist on time?

I’m gonna be honest… probably not.

But it’ll be here, and that ain’t nothing.

And you should follow The Costume Codex on YouTube to see the rest of the videos. I’ll be allowed to add mine late, but there’s some good stuff that’s going to happen there starting tomorrow. I’m very excited about it.

But for now, for us here together in this moment, there is this; hope.

The Red Balloon

Once, in my twenties, I was on a business trip with some friends, and one of them asked, “Where do you live? In the past, the present or the future?”

The person who asked is one of those perfect people, you know? Not Instagram perfect; she’s completely genuine. She’s lovely. Smart. Talented. She’s been married since her early twenties; they’re still happy now. She has two smart, seemingly happy kids. Even back then—she was about 28 at the time she asked me this question—I could see her life unfolding with its long trail of perfectly-aligned, fully-checked boxes and I was happy for her, because I knew she would be happy. And of course, I knew she would answer this question correctly.

I, however, answered it first. “The future. Definitely the future.”

The third person on our business trip, a guy I was about to start dating in a few months and stop dating a few months after that, said, “Definitely the past.”

And then my lovely, beautiful checkbox friend said, “Huh. Interesting. I live in the present.” This was before Eckhart Tolle was a thing… at least before I’d heard of him. But even without having yet read The Power of Now, I knew that she had the “right” answer, and I had the wrong one, but I didn’t care.

The future was everything to me.

When you grow up in dark spaces, you cope how you cope. Some people acknowledge it and tell people and say, “Hey, this isn’t okay, I need some help.” Some people act out and get in trouble, hoping someone will notice and help them.

Me? I pretended everything was fine. I did well in school. I had friends. I was funny and sociable. I got drunk at parties and cried, but other than that… I think I probably seemed okay, and I pulled that off by looking to the future. I reached my arms out toward the bright side and chased it like a toddler chasing a runaway helium balloon; never quite getting it, but always, always reaching. I thought about what my life would be like…

…when I went to college.

…when I got a job.

…when I fell in love.

…when I got married.

…when I had kids.

And so on from there. It was always when, when, when. My favorite song from the time I was seven years old was Billy Joel’s Vienna. Even as Billy sang, “Slow down, you crazy child… Vienna waits for you,” I didn’t pause to wonder why a song so antithetical to my existence was my favorite song. I was too busy chasing helium balloons.

Chasing, as it turns out… hope.

Many things have happened between now and then. I went to college. I got many jobs. I fell in love. I got married. I had kids. There are fewer balloons before me than behind me. Not so much to chase now.

But also, much less to run away from.

I’ve finally looked at the reality of my life, discovered the power of acknowledgement and processing. I’m no longer denying and burying the past. No longer running away from my present. I’ve built the life I want, and now that I’m here I want to be here. Sure, there are things I’d love to do… I want to write more books, I want to move to New Zealand… but honestly? I’m happy where I am.

And because my relationship to hope, through my whole life, has been one of running away from what was real so I could chase something that wasn’t, when my good friend asks me to make a video about one scene in one story that means “hope” to me… I’m drawing a blank.

I don’t know what hope looks like when I’m not desperately chasing a balloon. I think, perhaps, I never knew what real hope was, because I wasn’t actually chasing hope. I was running from a darkness that was threatening to swallow me whole if I didn’t keep moving, and that’s a very different thing.

The truth is, I don’t know what hope is. I mean, I can look it up in a dictionary, same as you—“the feeling that what is wanted can be had or events will turn out for the best”—but that’s just a definition. I spent a good eight years turning back, moving deliberately into the past and through the darkness so it would stop poisoning my present, which were two places I couldn’t imagine spending any time in when I answered my friend’s question so quickly all those years ago. Now, as I’m finally emerging from all that darkness into a world full of balloons I’m not desperately chasing, I don’t think of hope as a function of the future anymore. I think of it as a function of the present, as much as I think of it at all, and I don’t think about it much.

So when my friend asked me to select one scene in all media that represented hope to me… I went blank.

I had no idea.

I pawed through a few possibilities, but the one thing I kept coming back to wasn’t a scene, but a single moment, a fraction of a panel in the “Season of Mists” run of Sandman, the comic book series I’m reviewing with my friend Alisa Kwitney while we wait for the release of the Netflix series.

For context, with as few spoilers as possible; there is a point in the “Season of Mists” storyline where Dream—also known as Morpheus, the Sandman, Shaper of Dreams, Oneiros, Kai’ckul—has to deal with possessing something of great power that he doesn’t want. Meanwhile, every god, faerie and trickster from every corner of every mythological realm wants it and is willing to bribe, threaten and cajole him until he gives it to one of them. Unable to make a decision, Dream slumps alone on his throne holding a red balloon given to him by the Princess of Chaos when he is visited by Matthew, a dream raven with strong 1930s “Hey, boss,” energy. Matthew reports on the latest disruption of the peace brought on by a drunken god, and he notices the balloon.

“Nice balloon you got there,” Matthew says.

Dream holds out the string. “If you like it, Matthew, it is yours. Here. Take it.”

Matthew, who was once a grown man and has not forgotten that fact, says, “Huh? What would I do with a…?”

And in the next panel, we see this in one tiny corner of the frame.

Matthew has not taken the balloon; he was taken by the balloon.

And that, I think, is where I got hope wrong. Hope, for me, is not something that I want to happen, that might happen. Not anymore. I have learned that I have no fucking idea what’s going to happen, and that’s probably for the best.

Hope is something that happens to me, in a moment when I’m dealing with tasks and taxes and drunken gods, and something simple and beautiful appears before me and in the very moment that I’m wondering why I’m allowing myself to be distracted by this thing, it grabs me. For a moment, in the present, I experience a hit of unexpected simplicity, and in that moment, everything is okay, because I have a balloon. I don’t need to imagine a glorious future where all my problems are solved and everything is perfect; I have a red balloon in the perfectly flawed present, and what else could I possibly want or need?

And that is, I think, what hope is to me.

Everything,

L