I used to answer almost every question with "I don't know".
People mistook it for ambivalence, carelessness, or the lack of intelligence. None of those things are true.
Instead, it came from a lack of belief. Just a few years ago, I was so lost and everything felt so hopeless, that I didn't dare to believe in or dream about the future.
"What education do you want?" "I don't know". In this sense, "I don't know" meant "I've tried so many times and failed, that I feel like I'll never be able to accomplish it anyways, so I don't want to get my hopes up.", but "I don't know" was the easier answer.
People also kept telling me that I deserved to be happy and live a happy life with a nice job and a nice partner, in a nice apartment. Nice was more that I dared to hope for, even a year ago. How could I get a nice job when I could barely attend school without it going wrong? How could I get a nice partner when I continuously kept failing at relationships and ending up with shitty or unfulfilling partners? How could I get a nice apartment when I had never been able to keep one up?
In social psychiatry, we're often told that what sparks the recovery can come from the strangest of places. Even if you accept all the help you're offered, it can take years until something triggers something in you that makes it go so much faster. And that's what happened to me. I can't put a finger on it, but something in me recently lit a though-to-be-long-lost fire, and I'm finally daring to hope and/or believe in a good future for myself.
I've begun painting again, something I lost the inspiration to do when I was at my lowest, I'm moving out soon, and into my very own place. And most importantly, I have concrete thoughts about the future. Realistic expectations.
My expectations felt realistic when I was in my "I don't know" phase as well, in the sense that it seemed realistic that I would never have a good future, but now I see that they were perhaps the most unrealistic.
It's not realistic that I'll end up living on the street, unloved and alone. And that is because I'm fighting. I'm trying to improve myself, I reach my hand out, and take the hands I'm offered.
They always say that part of the path to recovering from a problem is admitting there is a problem you need help with. I say it's just as important to allow yourself to accept that help, but you can't do that until you dare hope that things will be better than what they are.
Hope is important. Hope can sometimes be what drives us.
The fact that I'm daring to have hopes for the future shows, to me, that my life has improved, and that I'm seeing that improvement. I'm daring to hope it will continue.
