Now, I’ll have you know that I’m not the kind of half-witted wannabe writer to wave tales of hope around willy nilly, nor am I the kind of literary-aligned lunatic to use positivity-themed puns for cheap comedic effect, after all, such behaviour would be positively punexcusable.On a serious note, if such shenanigans leave you feeling despondent, demoralised, and even damn right discombobulated, then rest assured, hope is on its way.

I know what you’re thinking — “Lee, seeing as you somehow manage to live a hopeful life even though you’ve not had any meaningful contact with your kids since 2016 — and that’s despite you having enough court orders to withstand any future pandemic-induced panic buying of toilet paper — I can’t help but think that you’re probably the best-placed person to write a sharp-witted, satirically slanted story on the importance of hope in living a life worth living.”

Thanks, I was hoping you were going to say something like that.

In 2016 my life spiralled out of control, and I did what most people do when faced with such adversity, I buried my head in the sand and hoped all my problems would go away of their own accord. To call the whole sorry situation a mere ‘messy divorce’ is a bit like calling the recent invasion of Ukraine ‘a small regional skirmish’.

What with my behaviorally-specific observational skills from being a DBT therapist, my somewhat psychiatrically-slanted view of the world due to being a mental health nurse, and my implicitly implored idiocy due to being a full-time friggin’ idiot I can now confidently say that at its worse, what I was experiencing back then was nothing less than clinical depression characterised by a constant low mood, an enduring sense of hopelessness and slowly increasing suicidal ideation. One minute I was muddling my way through life much like everyone else and the next thing I know I’m suddenly homeless, childless, penniless, and at serious risk of never seeing my kids again.

It wasn’t long before dark clouds of depression came over me. My life suddenly became a very dark place to be. In amongst all the chaos I was oblivious to the fact that what little hope I had left of ever seeing my kids again was quickly being eaten up by the ever-present and ever-increasing darkness. Finding myself emotionally, physically, and financially spent, and yet somehow still no nearer to seeing my kids I began to feel completely hopeless.

Without a shadow of a doubt, if it weren’t for hope I wouldn’t be alive today. You see, six years on and my circumstances still haven’t changed, I still continue to be denied contact with my kids, and I still continue to pursue contact through the courts, but what I do now have again is renewed hope. And this time around it’s the kind of hope that gets my sorry backside out of bed in the morning, the kind of hope that keeps me seeking purpose and meaning in a world of unavoidable adversity, and the kind of hope that keeps me working towards my goals in the most effective way I know.

I’ll be honest with you, when I first started writing this piece I had hoped it’d be the kind of story that writes itself, I mean, who likes revisiting painful memories in the interests of such trivial pursuits as creative writing, self-reflection, and personal growth — I also hoped it wouldn’t make me cry, but it did that too. But if nothing else, what writing this story has done is remind me how essential hope is to creating and maintaining a life worth living.

Hope to me is somehow much more than the belief that my kids will one day seek me out, much more than the belief that those darkest of days are gone forever, and much more than the belief that I will continue to seek purpose and meaning in a world of unavoidable pain. Hope to me has come to be as essential to life as the air that I breathe.

Hope may not have fixed my broken heart but it did save my life.

*You can read more from Lee here: https://leeazevado.com/