hope, pt. 3

Alex.
I guess I was pretty depressed for a while after it all went down, but I never paid attention to that sort of thing. There's too much life going on to worry about feeling sad, you know? That was her problem, really. We weren't so different, but instead of soldiering on she'd just spend all her time worrying about it, like worrying ever did anything. The best cure is to just pretend nothing's wrong.

It was the weirdest thing, though. Suddenly I come home from work and she's just waiting for me like nothing changed, and I felt like . . . like feeling the first raindrops after months of nothing but sunshine. I'd been in this long stagnant period and suddenly things were alive again. I guess I was afraid, too, because what the fuck did she even want? But it was like getting a second chance.

That's the thing about hope. When it's strong enough, when it's real, it makes you ignore everything else, especially when you're someone like me, who says "fuck it" to all the second-guessing bullshit. Because I realized right then that life was shit when she wasn't around, and I was just lying to myself. And all these visions of a beautiful future started dancing through my head. And for a little while, I really believed it.