There are those of us who want just one more chance. We promise to make it better, try harder, or love more if we get just one more chance. We wait for that one more chance. We live in the past hoping to make things right. We live in past hope.

We carry guilt and shame, and it clings to us like dog doo on the bottom of our shoe. Like glitter, we are sure everyone notices our guilt and our shame. We are sure everyone sees how we did not measure up to what could have been.  And we continue to hope for one more chance.

Past hope is a fantasy. It never is what we imagine it could be or would be if we had one more chance. It does not exist in reality. Even if we did get one more chance it would never, could never fulfill our expectations.

Past hope holds us hostage in a parade of longings that keep us barricaded from the future.

Then, one day we realize that past hope was not keeping us alive, it was hopeless. It was slowly smothering us to death, and we begin to untangle its tentacles from our thoughts and prayers. On that day we begin to live again.