A Page I Don't Remember Writing: Hope in the Longest Season

I keep notebooks. I write in them from time to time, when something inside needs somewhere to go.

Recently, I was looking through one of them, and I found a page I don't remember writing at all. The handwriting is mine. The notebook is mine. But the woman who wrote it feels like someone else. An earlier version of me, maybe, who left a note behind without telling me.

This is what she wrote, one evening in March:

March is a spring that feels like a sunrise after a long night. A very long night, three and a half years long.

It was cold. But now hope, and something hot and spicy, are warming me, bringing back the wish to live, and a burning taste that comes from pepper, not from pain.

March is wet and still cold, but it promises warmth and green. The slush is a pledge of future flowers. It is still snowing, but to a tired soul the snowflakes look like petals falling from blossoming trees.

I want warmth. Sunlight. The feeling of life in a silent body that is waiting so impatiently to wake up.

I read it several times.

I remember that long night very well. Every cold month of it. But I had no memory of this evening, of the woman who looked at the snow and decided to see petals.

Pain leaves deep marks. Small moments of hope are written in lighter ink, and they fade.

That is what struck me most. Even in the hardest time, there was a part of me that knew how to hope. She tasted the pepper and noticed it was not pain. She looked at the slush and saw flowers coming. I had forgotten she existed.

I don't know what happened to her in the months after. Maybe she got tired. Maybe she simply moved quietly into the background, while the rest of me was busy surviving.

But I am grateful she wrote it down. Because now, when I doubt that I can feel hope, I have proof that I already did once. In her handwriting. Which is also mine.

If it still feels like winter where you are, that's alright. Maybe a part of you is already watching for spring, even if you can't feel her yet.

Would you like to write something back?

I read every answer myself. It stays private unless you say otherwise.

If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please reach out to local emergency services or a crisis line in your country right now. You deserve immediate support.

With love, from HerWay

← Previous story · Next story → · Back to the Journal