Hope floats

"HOPE-

how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insidious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it."

~Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

That word resonates behind my eyeballs, bouncing around among all these damn words in my head: faith, love, strength, peace, perseverance, forgiveness, pain, ache, fear...

I found other things in that word-peace, comfort, strength- was able to carefully balance myself on the edge of it, and push forward. Or at least teeter slowly as I waited for my life to begin again. Even in the most painful of storms, it was my buoy, a bright light in many a dark nights. 

Now.

("If today I lose my hope, please remind me that your plans are better than my dream.")

I can't single out the word, or feel it's power. It has very little pull right now. It's just another word, one I want to push away so I can curl up in a bulletproof ball in my bed.

But it's like the weed growing wildly in the flowerbed in my backyard: insistent, obnoxious, overpowering, and disgustingly beautiful in all it's glory. 

I want to turn my back on it.
I cannot.