When to have Hope

Hope is something you need if you want to recover. It is hope that that situation will get better. How do you have it when you have been in prison for thirty years? That just happen in the news yesterday and I heard this morning he said what kept him going was hope. Hope has always been around and will continue to be. It can start with hoping you will recover from mental distress. You start by setting goals. The first can be stabilizing with consistency. Then you can decide what you would like to do with your life. It might be school or work. Some people can start full-time and others may have to go part time. Others may not want the challenge at all. That is O.K whatever hope brings will be for the best. I like doing something every day it helps me stay recovered. I do not have to think about my mental distress all the time. There are other things to think about. By exercising, music and reading as well as work help my mind in a lot of ways. Also I like watching comedy shows that make me laugh and release stress. I do my best to eat healthy and exercising has really helped. When I am done exercising if the mail is there, I take a walk around the pond in my apartment to pick it up. All of what I have today though started with a lot of hope. I can remember being at the State Hospital and wondering if I would ever get out of there. I can relate to the guy who just did thirty years, because without hope he would have told them what they wanted to hear just to get out of prison. Nobody would have then believed he was innocent. There were a lot of obstacles along the way. He could not get paroled until he went through a sex offender program and admitted he was a sex offender. I can relate I remember one counselor at the State Hospital that kept trying to make me say that I was a danger to myself and others. If I did not say those words, he said he would keep me there until I did. If I was still insane at the time I would have but I was not. I never said it and tried going to court instead. I lost in court really because I never even seen the judge. Although when I came back to the State Hospital they told me the ward was closing and I would be the first to move and have a new counselor. So sometimes you just have to hope when things look like they will not change they will. I think it is sad it takes so long sometimes.