• I had always pictured recovery as a kind of linear progression, a climb up a steep grassy hill. I thought that with the progression of every day, I would climb a little further, feel a little better, until I reached the top. I thought I’d be able to look down and see a golden city at my feet. I’d look and know that was waiting for me. I’d know the worst was over, and that what I’d left behind could not compare to what I’d find ahead of me.

    I thought I could step into that golden city of future with a free heart, and no wounds worse than sore feet.

    But it’s not so easy. Nothing in life ever is.

    Moving on, redefining myself was more like scaling a mountainous heap of boulders and gravel, all sharp edges, threatening to collapse and reduce me to nothing in an instant. Sometimes, I take a wrong step, I have a bad day, and I’m left clutching at stony shards as I crash back to where I started.

    Sometimes memories of what I had, what I lost, cling to my heart like leeches, drawing out my will to go on. I question every word I said, every time I dared to hope that it would be all right.

    Yet every day, I wake up, and continue to move up that insurmountable mountain, even though I’m never quite sure why.

    And I reach the top one day, and look down, and realize there’s nothing there but what I thought I’d moved past. The future is made only of my past, and no matter where I look, it’s all the same.

    I stand, against the silver-streaked sky and take a step, then another.

    My feet are crushed and my skin is torn in a dozen places. If I close my eyes for a moment, and let myself think, I will start crying again.

    But I don’t.

    And I still don’t know why. I don’t know how to get down off this mountain, how to find that golden city. I don’t know if I ever will.

    But that’s the thing about hope, isn’t it? We want to believe that we can recover, that we can make everything right again, that our scarred hands and scratched faces will heal away to nothing.

    Despite all evidence, we keep trying.