Failure To Thrive

Hope

June 2, 1997

Hope was a cruel thing. Hope was not a thing with feathers like Mr. Van Driessen said it was, no, hope was a thing with sharp claws that stabbed and tore the heart into shreds. Hope was the thing that had stranded two expecting wives in an unrelenting state of melancholy when their husbands never returned from a war overseas that slaughtered millions and ended in nuclear catastrophe. Hope was the thing that had torn innocent little Shirley apart when she and her neighbor had been forced to grow up in a foster system full of all of the wrong people, their birth mothers resting beneath dirt and stone after succumbing to the tide of despair. Hope was the thing that had left young but tough Miss Head abandoned at an empty altar with nothing but dried flowers to her unchanged name and her neighbor the only person at the pew, the fertility of their bodies clearly the only redeeming quality they had that mattered to the men they pined for, nothing more than that. Hope was the thing that had separated two young mothers from the children that they had lost the chance to ever love, sparing two little boys from an uncaring foster system by leaving them to fend for themselves in an empty house while the two young women with sellable bodies faded away in the throes of all-consuming addiction. Hope was the thing that had haunted two unwanted boys in the dark of night when they each thought the other was asleep when they were really both wide awake, wondering what it would be like to have those toys they saw on TV and why their mothers hadn't wanted to stay home to really get to know them even though they both knew that they never would get answers to any of those late-night questions. Hope was the thing that made two teenagers wonder when they would finally score with a bunch of hotties and if those kisses they had shared with each other in private had ever meant something or not. Hope was the thing that had shown Beavis a glimpse into what he could have had but never would that stifling day when Butt-Head had pushed that plastic spider ring onto his finger and made him wonder if he could've ever been loved during all of those years he had lost to the haze of dissociation masquerading as faulty memory. Hope was the thing that kept Butt-Head up late at night wondering what was so wrong with him that every hot woman he had ever met rejected his advances and if he would wake up one day on an empty couch or in a cold bed, even Beavis having grown tired of him and leaving him all alone in a silent house. Hope was the thing that feasted on generations of lives but never felt satisfied, always craving more warm blood and unshed tears. At least hopelessness could be forgotten in front of something as simple as a crackling picture show or grainy television screen, but the same could not be said for hope. Loneliness did not come from hopelessness, loneliness came from hope, and hope was pain. Loneliness was the worst kind of pain and its only remedy for two miserable teenagers right now was blood or bile. Tit for tat, pain for pain. Consistency was a sham and pain changed every single year, so they just sucked it up and moved on. It didn't matter what they did to cope as long as they were still together and didn't dwell on whatever hope could mean for them. Maybe they would change a teensy weensy bit, but as long as they weren't risking losing each other like when Beavis had rotted half to death and had nearly become a complete stranger, which definitely wouldn't happen again because they were indestructible and that was totally just a one-time thing, not to mention that Butt-Head was perfectly fine, barely bleeding at all and never going that deep, then it didn't matter, right? They were doing fine. They were doing just fine. Heck, they were probably doing way better than their own mothers had probably fared at their age. Unlike their mothers, they weren't smart enough to figure out how to get bootleg alcohol or actual drugs that weren't just plain old paint thinner fumes, and that one guy who had used to sell them cigarettes had left for a different town a couple of years ago, so it wasn't like they were seriously addicted to anything. Well, at least not yet; alcoholism would become a major cornerstone later in their lives, but they didn't have easy access to the sweet refuge of a cheap bottle yet, still stuck in the boring old present as dumb kids who needed something to make their lives bearable. Well, their lives were bearable and they were doing fine, they had TV and each other, and they were doing so fine that nobody could possibly ever change their minds on the matter or try to get them to make goals for the future like that dumb career counselor they hadn't taken very seriously had tried to do. The blood on those shorts in the corner of the bedroom and the too-full box of Eggo waffles in the freezer didn't matter, they were doing fine and didn't need to think about crummy old hope or something wussy like that. MTV usually had some good stuff on and they always both sat on the couch close together, doing fine. They were fine just the way they were. Babes and explosives would be more than welcome, but Beavis and Butt-Head still had everything that they thought they needed. They didn't need to let hope into their lives, they needed to forget the hope they'd accidentally gotten a taste of. They just couldn't dwell on dreams that would never come true. Hope was just too cruel for that. Hope sucked.