Not a pretty place

I'm a champion hoper. No matter how bad things seem, I always have a little spark of hope glimmering deep inside me. I do what I can to pass that glimmer of hope on to B, who is an awful hoper. He gives up and gets down on life pretty quickly when things get tough.

And tough things have been for us since we began our life together three years ago. Every time we start to get on track and feeling good about the direction our life is taking, something comes along to kick us in the gut and make us start all over again.

What can I say? I'm an extraordinarily unlucky person, and my terrible luck is now B's by marriage.

We never get more than a few months at a time when things are good. And every time the good times end, I'm there with my unwavering hope that things will get better and we, individually, and our family as a whole will get back to the good times again. Soon.

Until now.

I've gotten to that place where I just can't hope any more because I've been kicked while I'm down one too many times. There's too much going on, no solutions to problems, no way to crawl out from under it all. My hope glimmer has gone out. I can no longer be the person carrying the family forward toward happy times because I doubt that any more happy times are coming.

I have no hope anymore. This is not a pretty place to be.