The Dreamer ✓

Letter 05

NO. 5 : A LETTER ABOUT YOUR HOPES AND DREAMS 

DECEMBER 29th, 2013

Dear Whoever,

Well, I'm not really sure how to start this letter. Like a lot of people, I have a lot of hopes and I have a lot dreams. Over the years some have died and new ones have been born in their place. I don't have  a specific career in my mind but I do know I want to do something in psychology or history.  Do you want to know my wildest dream?

 That one day, I will be somebody.  That when I die I will not be forgotten, that my name will go down in the history books. For the seventeen years I've been on this planet, I have not accomplished anything noteworthy, for the seventeen years I have always been the nobody in the sea of somebodies. Sometimes, when I'm particularly bored my mind will stray and I'll imagine what they'll say about me in the history books.

Or something like that. It puts a smile onto my face to think that I could achieve something great, something on par with Cleopatra and William Shakespeare and Martin Luther King Jr. but after a few seconds it depresses me because I know I can never achieve something as brilliant as that. You see, after Mum died, all I could think about was ridding the world of the disease that killed her. Cancer is a sneaky litte thing, its devious and cruel and doesn't care about who it hits.

I dream that I've found the cure for it. It's part of the reason I took Biology as an A Level, the other part is because, well, Biology is interesting. I like knowing how things work. When I was a kid, I liked taking clocks apart, analysing each component, studying the mechanisms. I used to marvel at how everything little thing connected. I spent my childhood taking clocks apart. Evelyn thought I was really for doing that and my dad used to get really cross when he found I'd taken apart another one of his watches. 

Whilst most people would concentrate on the Why, I would always focus on the How. How does it work? How does this happen? Because once you understand the How, you can understand the Why. My brain is wired that way. Nowadays, I don't take clocks apart anymore, I know the mechanisms of a clock like I know the back of my hand. I know how a clock ticks, and I know why it ticks. You see the How seeks to understand, it has a genuine curiosity, but the Why, is accusatory and bewildered.

I have a lot of hopes.

I hope that I become somebody.

I hope that I'm imagining the way James Baxter looks at Natalie Huxham, I hope to the stars and beyond he looks at me like that one day.

I hope I feel good enough one day. 

I hope Ariel gets that part in the school play she's been wanting for ages.

I hope that I don't fail my upcoming exams.

I hope one day I'll be strong enough. 

I hope I find that light at the end of the tunnel.

I hope that I don't always feel this lost.

Hope.

I'm really starting to hate that word. Hope raises you high, it sets you up for disappoint and lets you fall. Hope is bittersweet. Hope never leaves you, even in your darkest moments, even when you're feeling so isolated and your thoughts are blackened, hope crawls in and settles.

Hope clings to you, it refuses to leave and it doesn't lighten the load. It makes it heavier. Everything amplifies when your hope is shattered and you're left broken and wandering in the dark by yourself. You need to squish, stamp, throw, beat down that hope as hard you can the instant it pops up because hope will only bring you pain.

But that's easier said than done.

So, I'm going to say this.

Don't hope. Hope is for the idle. It's for the starry-eyed, the dreamers. Hope builds falsities out of the harsh reality. Those of us who see the world for what it really is, cruel and random, we need to believe.  Belief is stronger than hope because belief drives you further than hope ever will.  

Love, Morgana.