Been a long, stressful week. Friends dying, setting boundaries with people, knee injury, emotional highs and lows. I'm drained, stressed, but alive, and alive is worth something. I'm taking it day by day, and trying to be kind to myself.
Optimism is a choice I make every day, and some days it's harder than others. But as much as I hurt, both emotionally and physically; as much as I feel like a walking wound right now, I refuse to give up. I will not let my pain consume me. I will not lose hope.
I believe in good intentions, empathy, and understanding. It doesn't necessarily make actions okay, or keep people who have hurt me enough from being evicted from my life, but it allows me to keep walking without so much bitterness.
Most of all, though, I believe in hope. I once wrote, "Hope is the surest way to save a life," and that was true. I don't want to imagine a world without hope, even if I have to sew it together from small bits of nature or a single kind word.
I'm hurting, but alive, and I am grateful for that life. Today I choose optimism. Today, I hold onto hope. Today, I live.