The pain of an open door

Over the past few months, I have discovered something about myself that I am almost ashamed to admit. I think I have allowed myself to become too hopeful. Not because I am naïve, and not because I believe the world is full of people waiting to help strangers, but because one person actually did.

Over the past year, Inge has helped us several times, sometimes directly and sometimes by asking people around her whether they were able to spare something. Added together, it amounted to a considerable sum. Because of her, we were able to buy parts that we otherwise could never have afforded, and I was even able to arrange another second-hand phone. I am still INCREDIBLY grateful to her for that.

But somewhere along the way, something else happened as well. I started to believe that perhaps there were more people like Inge. That may sound strange, but when you have spent years facing mostly closed doors, one open door does not feel like just one open door. It feels like proof that an exit might exist. And I think that is exactly what happened to me.

Since then, I have found myself waking up almost every morning with the same thought. Maybe today. Maybe someone will respond to a story. Maybe someone will read what we have written. Maybe someone will see how stuck we are. Maybe a message will arrive. Maybe real, life-changing help will come. Maybe we will finally be able to buy the tires we need. Maybe we will be able to use the car again. Maybe we will be able to escape now that being at home has become too much. Maybe we will finally be able to visit that piece of land in the south of the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany where our life might be able to begin again.

Maybe. That word has become almost a constant companion over the past few months. And then, every evening, the same thing happens. There is no message. No response. No help. No change. And the next day begins all over again.

What I have only recently started to understand is that the pain I feel does not come solely from our situation itself. Part of the pain comes from expectation. Psychologically, there is something peculiar about that. When you never expect help to come, it hurts to be stuck, but you are not disappointed all over again every single day.

When, on the other hand, you have experienced someone actually helping, something new appears: hope. And hope is beautiful. But hope can hurt as well. Because from the moment you start believing that help is possible, you unconsciously begin looking for the next time it might happen. That means that every day without a response no longer feels neutral. Every day without a response feels like a missed opportunity, a door that remains closed, an expectation that is never fulfilled.

I think that is why I have been carrying so much sadness lately. Not because Inge helped us. Quite the opposite. But because her help opened something that had been closed for years. The idea that there may actually be people who understand how hopeless our situation can sometimes feel. The idea that there may still be a way forward.

And now I find myself constantly living between two realities. The first reality tells me that there are people who genuinely want to help. I know that because I have experienced it myself. The second reality is that I do not know whether tomorrow, next week or next month someone else will step forward.

And it is precisely between those two realities that I live every day, suspended between proof and uncertainty, between hope and disappointment, between what is possible and what actually happens.

Perhaps that is one of the hardest places to live. Because I am no longer completely hopeless, yet I do not feel safe either. I exist somewhere in between, in a kind of no man’s land of hope, and some days that hurts far more than I ever imagined it would.