A Modest Tale of Hope

Hope is not big, momentous, grand; it is not a plumed picture hat, not a coat, not a bag. It is as modest as the boring, old underwear beneath all that glamour, the underwear we somehow manage to change (almost) every day, despite being glued to our beds, losing lovers and friends, and despite unemployment.

Margaret rolled over and turned off her alarm, picking out a painful wedgie. She was wearing Tuesday’s pair of underwear for the second consecutive day, one of the six pairs her ex-mother-in-law had sent her for Christmas (Monday was missing). What day was it, really? Who knew? Who cared? Not Margaret.

She wriggled into her sweatpants beneath the duvet—she couldn’t afford heating this winter—and plucked last night’s socks from the nightstand, before kicking her legs over the edge of the bed and sliding into a pair of flip flops; it was the first of five years that her (ex) mother-in-law hadn’t bought her slippers. The underwear would do, though. I mean, all her old pairs were coming apart, the fronts wearing away, almost sheer, from all the lonely, violent masturbation (yes, violent); she’d recently made herself bleed with a deodorant can. New Year’s resolution: stop watching porn (or purchase an actual dildo). But that was unrealistic and vague. A self-help book she’d once read—when she’d had enough energy to read more than boxed lasagne instructions—said that goals required specificity. No daily porn, then. Weekly?

She shrugged on her fluffy, brown dressing gown, dragged herself into the kitchen and clicked on the kettle. Instant coffee, always, despite the coffee grinder, two tins of beans, a French press, and an espresso machine. Not to mention the coffee pod machine she no longer used; she missed all those exorbitant, colourful boxes, and all the small luxuries that made a house a home, all the small luxuries she’d taken for granted before her dismissal. Apparently crying at work wasn’t a good look. It’s been a year, Margaret, David had said, and we’ve tried to be supportive. At least he’d helped clear her desk, ushered her out, paid the cab fare, the Pad thai, the wine, the morning after pill.

Why did she let these things happen to her? And why were men so aroused by crying women? You’re so wet, he’d said, but so was the mascara-stained shoulder of his white dress shirt. Hermès. She’d checked the label, and for some reason, found this display of wealth particularly unsettling, more so than the audible fart, like a pricked balloon, that had accompanied his rattling snore. She found his pubes in her bed for a week thereafter and wished on every one that she hadn’t done what she’d done.

Margaret swished the hot coffee around in her mouth and waddled over to the bin where wine bottles stood like bowling pins—only one euro a bottle at Carrefour—and though they tasted how she imagined petrol tasted, she was relieved she hadn’t yet resorted to cartons; she could still expertly remove the cork, and romanticise the glug, glug of red wine filling a glass (albeit a dirty one, still stained with lipstick). She snatched the bottles up by their necks, and dropped them into a canvas bag, where they squawked and squealed all down the stairs, all through the courtyard, and all through the park where she found the community recycling bin.

Her dressing gown, socks and flip flops garnered some attention; but at least she’d grabbed her sunglasses (which she considered quite stylish). She liked to think she looked like a celebrity—please, no photos, can’t I just live an ordinary life?—or that the old man walking his dog was reminded of old Hollywood actresses and fur coats, of lovelorn bombshells smoking cigarettes and drowning their sorrows (maybe she should dye her hair blonde). But, as each bottle clanked and shattered into the bin, resounding through the park, she knew she looked more like an alcoholic than a star, and it was probably about time she stopped romanticising self-destruction, and attributing glitz and glamour to grime and gunk.

“Good morning,” said the old man, slipping a poo bag onto his hand like a glove.

“Morning.”

“Cold, isn’t it?”

“Freezing.”

Margaret turned to leave with her empty canvas bag. It was the first time a stranger had spoken to her while picking up poo, and it was oddly humbling, curiously comforting, as though he were saying, ‘I don’t think I’m above you. I’m human, too.’

She screwed on the detergent lid with blue fingers, and bip-bop-bipped the washing machine on; it churned, the pipes rattled, and she returned to her bedroom where she searched for her to-do list, written on the back of a damning Carrefour receipt (wine, chocolate, cucumber, lube). She’d used the self-checkout that evening. Unexpected item in the bagging area. Bloody hell.

There it was! Margaret pulled the receipt out from beneath last night’s comfort bowl of cereal (she’d binged the entire season of Normal People).

·      wake up at eight

·      take out trash

·      shower

·      laundry

·      eat something

·      go for a walk

So far so good. She laid Saturday’s underwear on her unmade bed, not that it was Saturday, but who cared? Not Margaret with her unplucked chin, unbrushed teeth and unclipped toenails. She’d take baby steps, and eventually find herself back on track, once again buying coffee pods and smelling of Coco Mademoiselle (as opposed to cauliflower, sweat and hair gel).

She kicked off her flip flops, slid off her socks and disrobed.

Sometimes we can’t see a glimmer of hope and so we assume it isn’t there, but hope, sometimes, means putting on a load of washing, having a shower and changing your underwear. Hope is not the glint of a needle in a haystack. Rather, it is the act of sorting through the hay, one straw at a time, until one day we inevitably find that therein lies its essence. Hope is action, not inaction; it is motion, not inertia; it is the pursuit, not the acquisition. And I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope.