Hope in Twinkling Lights

I asked my cousin if his parents fought and yelled at each other. He got really mad, and said that wasn't something people were supposed to talk about. I didn't mean to embarrass him, I just wanted to know if I was alone. I felt very alone.

Shouldn't married people love each other? I couldn't make sense of so many things in my life, and this was just one of them, but it was a big one.

***************

Sitting in a dark room listening to a youth group speaker talk about the pain of being a kid with divorced parents, I saw tears all around me. I cried tears of my own - over the pain of marriage. It didn't seem right, but it was how I felt.

***************

I kept my father's secrets for years. More secrets than I could count. Too many lies to easily keep them all straight.

I told my mom I was moving out, with or without her. I was relieved when she packed her boxes and moved with me. It wasn't an easy thing to do, and I was proud of her.

We bought a Christmas tree a few months later. It was full and beautiful, and we decorated it with white lights and blue and silver ornaments. A matching tree was something mom and I had wanted for a long time, but my father always said no.

I sat in the living room late one night, staring at the twinkling lights on our tree, and I felt free. I knew we we could make it through anything.

The prompt: A piece about (x), illustrated through (y).

For this week, we want the (x) to be hope.

A true story about hope, illustrated through your experiences.

Tweet