I accidentally read a sad book today. I managed to leave my kindle at home before leaving on a trip, so I stopped at the bookstore at the airport and I was too short to reach the book I wanted. This book was billed as “deeply funny” (etc.), had a cute dog on the cover, and most important of all, was within arm’s length.
As it turns out, the story is about that cute dog. That cute, but very old dog, who we learn at very beginning of the book will likely not make it to the end. This then, is what I read just after I returned home from the vet with my very old cat. Like I said, it was an accident.
And while the book was in fact very sad and the main characters go through one bad thing after another, the story isn’t a black pit of gloom and despair and I realized that at some level, hope was a fragile thread, woven through the sadness.
I sometimes think about not writing here anymore (or at least making it private) so that those who know about it don’t have to worry about reading yet again about the same fears, the same issues, the same whiny inability to fix my fucking life already and get on with things. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t write here though. The words and feelings would be trapped inside me, tangled up together like string with no way for me to see any of them clearly.
But surely I could find some hopefulness, even if it was a frail thread, barely visible.
I was talking to someone the other day about hope. I said I tried to avoid it. That it seemed too close to desperation. And it still does. Wanting something is meaningless, really. Life is full of too many moving parts and too many reasons why not.
And my hand hovers over the delete key because I see no frail thread here, no laughter in the face of tears, no heartfelt lessons learned, no admiration for courageousness. There aren’t even any cute dogs.