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December 1, 2003

Hope – life’s driving force; this intangible concept that propels people forwards. I have been thinking a lot about it the past few weeks, mostly due to my conversations with Tabby. I remember years ago, sitting on a plush pink velvet chair – my chair – in front of my therapist trying to answer a question she posed to me; a question about my future, about how I saw my future. I answered in colours and abstractions – black, dark, bleak, shadows. Nothing I said was concrete. I didn’t talk about college, a career, marriage or even a family. At 13 years old, I had no hope for my future life and, I feel, I attempted suicide twice that year (five times total in my teen years) because of that lack of hope.

Seven years later, I would answer my therapist’s question quite differently. Though I don’t really know what I want to do after graduation – how I want to begin my ‘adult’ life, I know that I will be successful in whatever I choose to do. I have hope that my life will turn out the way I so desperately want it to. In seven years, I have become a completely different person – I don’t know how or when. I have become a stronger person – or maybe I was always a strong person, it just took all this time for me to realize it.

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From my talks with Tabby, I have learned that hope can almost be considered an end goal – a means for change. It is not a passive concept that implies that one can achieve their goals without exercising some sort of effort. Rather, hope is sort of a guide, something that forces a person to actively make choices, choices that will move one forward towards a better life. Yes, this probably sounds quite idealized. I know I have nowhere near the ability needed to focus on my own choices and how said choices assist or hinder me in reaching my end goals. I am still affected greatly by the choices others make. I let those choices control my life when they should have very little bearing on it, if at all. Even though it sounds incredibly egocentric, I really just need to focus on myself and how everything I do impacts my life. I think that was what Tabby was talking about when she told me that I needed to take time for myself.

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So here I am at 5am trying to write down the things that I have been constantly thinking about since a conversation 13 days ago and a subsequent livejournal entry that received a, “wow…” from a boy that confuses me greatly (I still don’t know what he meant by that comment). I don’t know if this is exactly what I have been wanting to say/write. I guess this can be viewed as a stepping off point for further thoughts and considerations about the subject. I think I just needed to get this out, so I could move forward. I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense to whoever decides to read it – including me.