Anne Lamott says, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.”

I’m not giving up. I’m showing up for my life every day, and I swear I am really truly trying to do the right thing. I am waiting. I’m watching. I’m working. But the dawn is slow in coming. I’m tired of being so confused about my life. I’m tired of hurting people that I love. It’s so hard to see how things are going to be ok. If my marriage ends, how can I be ok? How can I be a single mother? How can I make new friends to replace the ones who have taken off after being hurt by me? How can I ever ask someone to be in my life, to be a part of this mess, when it seems so inevitable that knowing me in any way will eventually end up causing them pain?

I’m so lonely, so starved for connection that I had to sit on my hands at a meeting last week in order to keep myself from reaching out to the woman sitting in front of me and touching her curls.

I have to stay strong during the day in order to be there for the girls. I’m their mother first and foremost, no matter what else is going on in my life. So I suck it up. I play with them, I snuggle with them, I read to them and sing them songs. But when they go to bed I crumble under the weight of all this pain. And sitting here in the dark right now all hope seems lost forever, no matter what the great and glorious Annie Lamott has to say about it.

It’s hard to be so lost. But I’m not giving up. I’ll show up tomorrow, like I do every day, and walk through this crap one step at a time. There’s nothing else I can do.