Don't Give Up

Life is full of heartache. It's a lesson we don't learn until we are drowning in it, heaving with burning lungs as we desperately cling to tiny shreds of dreams we've spent a lifetime working toward. It's shocking at first, the complete and utter devastation that you feel. That devastation soon turns to anger, and after anger, guilt. First world problems. After guilt, a mind numbing sadness creeps in and takes you almost by surprise.

When you've spent your entire life working for something, slowly building it brick by brick, beating every obstacle that got in your way, how do you now cope when it crumbles beneath you?

Don't give up, they said, and they were right, only quitting feels like giving up and you're burning with shame. You're battered and bleeding, unsure of how to even make it through the day.

As you leave it behind you, watch it slowly fade in the rear-view mirror, the tears sting your eyes and trail hot down your cheeks. Your fingers tremble on the steering wheel as reality hits you hard. This is it. All the decisions and non decisions, they have all come to this. It's a heavy price to pay, and a heavy burden to swallow. You're leaving things behind, and far more things unsaid, but you know deep down that it's the only way this can go. That thought should give you comfort, but mostly it just makes you sick.

You reach the end of one chapter, and begin another. It's not at all what you wanted, and certainly not what you expected, but you make it what you can, because what other choice do you really have? The days turn into weeks, the weeks drift into months, and most of the time you can hold it together. The day-to-day is enough to not think, to not go into that place you've locked away. Every now and then you find a crack in your resolve, but you lift your chin up and you push onward. You don't give up.

Months approach a year and you know that date is coming. You fear it almost as much as you feared the day this started. You still tell yourself it was for the best, and part of you believes it. The larger part of you is still mourning the end of your future, at least the perceived ending of your perceived future. You watch those around you slowly succumb to the same fate, and the pain swallows you whole each time.

It's nearly the end of winter when you get the message that you both knew, and didn't know was coming. Your reaction is much harder than you expected. Your chest burns, the tears come, and you just sit staring out the window. Not this time, you say to yourself. Not again. You try to hold it in, to think about anything else, but all you can think about is everything that's happened over the last five years and it plays through your mind in stunning clarity. You zero in on that first moment, the one that might have changed everything, and you realize that you wouldn't do anything differently. Not if it got you to this place. Not if it got you the people that you know and love so fiercely.

It's not what you expected, and it's not what you wanted, but it is what it is. Life is full of heartache, but as you sit with your heart breaking, you re-live every moment you've had over the last five years, and you suddenly realize that without the pain, these bright, beautiful memories would somehow be less bright.

You learn a new lesson.

Not giving up has multiple meanings, and you're about to take a crash course in all of them.