To Hope In Vain
What is this thing we call hope, that we should build our entire lives upon, only to discover in the end that it had but one purpose, to abandon us. Hope is but a tease that leaves you wanting and waiting...forever. It has broken every promise of a better tomorrow, so I can no longer deceive myself, as it has done to me, time and time again. Hope is a false god. Over the last few weeks, I have been gripped by a quiet sadness whose cure I do not know of. The life of someone I love is in grave danger, and I am helpless to stop it. One year ago, my beloved sister became ill with a disease of the mind, and it took away her reasoning and appetite and replaced them with suspicion, malice, and the irresistible impulse to harm her own body. I saw as her body was breaking down, as her sanity was slipping away. I love her so much that even as life was escaping her, little by little, it was escaping me as well. I felt helpless. I feel that now. Her condition improved after months of treatment, and she began eating again, but she changed somehow and was not the same person that I once knew. Sometimes I wonder how things can go so wrong, just when they are starting to go right. They tell me that the illness of the mind, is most difficult to cure, because there is no cure. When someone does not believe that they are ill, they will think that the rest of the world is ill for not seeing things the way they do. The prognosis is grim. She will always be this way to some extent, and it is likely to kill her unless she takes her meds, which she absolutely refuses. Still, I kept telling myself that she would get better, that she would eat again and live life fully and become my little sister again. I could do nothing but hope, and I hoped for nothing but that, for my little sister to be returned to me like the way she was before. But I was a fool to give hope everything that I had, for it soon became the only thing that was real to me. Now the only thing that is real is her suffering, because her condition has relapsed and she was hospitalized again, recently. The disease has returned to steal her away from me. I have spent almost all of my time by her side, so I have not been able to update my journal. It would seem that when you try to fall off the planet, some unseen force will always pull you back. Her paranoia and anorexia has relapsed, and I am forced to see her suffer all over again. I am forced to feel her suffer. I almost cry every time I sit down to a meal, knowing that she is starving. And just when I thought that things could not get any worse, the doctors have told me that she now has diabetes and must follow a strict diet or her life could be in danger. How can she follow a strict diet when she is paranoid and does not want to eat? I do not know how much more of this I can take. I do not know if I can be strong enough. I will give her strength, until the very end. But there may not be any left for me. Hope was the greatest cover that was laid over the eyes of men.