It is a tragic and dark day when you've let go of hope, love and your dreams. I don't think this is something that happens suddenly, but rather a process that takes place over time until one day you realize that somewhere along the way you've lost who you are as you slowly let go of your hope, belief in love and the dreams that once mattered. It was a hard and self defeating year in the life of Shelley. As I lost friends and family to various disputes and misunderstanding and my health left me in utter pain I also lost hope. I turned inward, hard and bitter. I have come to feel like a shadow: not fully real; not fully whole. I have pushed people away and forgotten that my words and actions can have effect on others. (For that I am deeply sorry.) And so comes the next leg of my journey: to collect those pieces of myself that I have let slip away, to remember what matters and who I am, to allow love to flow again, to trust again. How scary! It's a risk as all great things tend to be.
The thing is I have recently begun to have hope in hope. It's where you start. It's the beginning and in this the sun shines a little more today than it did yesterday. I pulled out an old binder today where I have kept bits of inspiration and found something that once held much meaning to me:

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge
That myth is more potent than history
That dreams are more powerful than fact
That hope always triumphs over experience
That laughter is the only cure for grief
And I believe that love is stronger than death.

-Robert Fulghum's Storyteller's Creed

I will believe again. I will hope once more and I promise to be willing to risk again.