April Is the Cruelest Hope

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain"

For those that didn't see that one coming -- where are you minds? Ever since the day I set the date for my now-canceled wedding, I've had those lines in my head on endless repeat. I knew I should have never picked a date in April -- I knew there was a problem all along. Compound that with the "curse" of my gown, and there was an air of gravity and uncertainty to that entire plan nearly a year and a half ago. Yet, still I marched on. Almost knowingly. Into the pitch-black caverns of a potential hell far worse than the one I had been living in (or the one I'm living in now) and I have only one cruel explanation: Hope.

If April is the cruelest month, which I do believe (and always have) that it is, then it is so by the very virtue of the fact that it elicits hope in people. That being said, hope is the cruelest emotion.

Hope breeds trust in unconfirmed happiness -- it's born of speculation and assumption. There's nothing concrete or real about it, just the dreamer's whimsy of possibility and fantasy of better days, better loves, better chances -- bright, endless future becomings. That and $4 still won't get me my morning latte. Hope is a poser of the most severe and sadistic kind.

Ah, cynicism. So comforting. [I could wax poetic here on the irony that cynicism is no less extreme and unrealistic as hope. How this emotion is an equal but opposite poser. How it breeds trust in unconfirmed loneliness and despair. However, to do so, would reveal the imperfections of my own current justifications, excuses, emotions, and theories, and, truly, why would I want to undermine my own argument?] Cynicism is the great bastion of defense against hope and all its minions: faith, joy, trust, confidence, stupidity.

Cynicism is safe -- especially as April approaches. I find it so reassuring to know that, in the end, I've abandoned these ridiculous notions of eternity for emotions that are encased in more defensive armor. After all, it's a lot easier to feel like a failure when hiding behind a shield of cold indifference than behind a veil of pink tulle and butterflies.