I’m no stranger to perseverance.

I fell silent after my mother’s recent and unexpected death. It had tragic consequences on me for all the wrong reasons.

And I almost disappeared.

But I won’t let myself fall into a despair that stops me from functioning completely.

I can’t.

I persevere because I want to thrive – and that’s a promise I made to myself when I was young.

I Gave My Pain a Voice

Perseverance isn’t just about getting on and doing the day-to-day.

Let me back up a little bit. I was suicidal when I was a pre-teen. My parents were going through a length and nasty divorce, and I didn’t have good peer relations. I stood with a butcher’s knife in my stomach wondering how much it would hurt to push it all the way in and bleed to death on the kitchen floor. I held a bottle of rubbing alcohol to my lips telling myself that I’d have to drink the entire bottle to poison myself effectively.

What’s technically called “maladaptive coping” was my inability to see what lay beyond the bleak miasma of my feelings. My actions scared me, so I told my mother. She connected me with a social worker from the Children’s Aid Society.

I described my thoughts to her as a dark cloud. I didn’t feel worthy of love. My feelings betrayed me. I couldn’t move past my pain until I gave it a voice; until I got the thoughts out of my head and into the world where someone else could help me negotiate those treacherous waters.

Keeping the “brain-weasels” locked up inside gives them power because there’s no one else to invalidate those horrible feelings and thoughts.

I Found Safety

Vera, the social worker, saved me. Getting out of my head saved me. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if she didn’t ensure that I felt safe.

I don’t remember how long our interactions lasted, but she was a presence in my life for a long time, years maybe. When I think about them now one of the most important things that come to mind is how safe I felt. Vera kept my feelings private and didn’t push her own agenda, except to steer me away from self-harm. We met in neutral spaces that weren’t influenced one way or the other by opposing, external forces.

They were conversations that I couldn’t have with either of my parents because both my parents figured heavily in the way I felt about myself and my life.

In every stressful event that has happened in my life, the first thing I’ve done is seek security of the same nature, in a person, or a place. Sometimes, that was even in myself, in my writing.

I Welcomed Change

One of the hardest things to do when I was young was to accept change, if not bring it about. I had “peer issues” when I was a kid. I hate reading that on my old report cards! I was the poor, underdog, latch-key kid from a broken home. I didn’t know that I had my own two feet that were more than willing to forge their own path in life.

Something stupid happened that shook my “friend” world during the same time that I was feeling so bad about myself. I floated through the aftermath in a bit of a haze until the friend I most wanted to be like, whose life I most idolized, acted negatively to another underdog like me.

All of a sudden I was Wonder Woman standing up for those who could not defend themselves, and damned be the consequences of impulsively acting against the trend. At the same time, I started a new year with a different school in a new neighbourhood.

I found the spark of the Wonder Woman I was to become. Sure, I wasn’t perfect, nor did I always act perfectly thereafter, but I wasn’t a doormat any more, afraid of letting go of what I knew as a “sure thing” in friendships.

And although welcoming change helped me persevere and thrive, I wasn’t able to effect change in every part of my life. In one case in particular, I couldn’t set things into a healthy direction until I was nearly middle-aged. But I wasn’t afraid of change any more.

I Set Boundaries

It took me forty so-odd years to see the ways in which my life wasn’t safe; to stand up to the ways in which I was being manipulated and abused by the person closest to me before my marriage. In many counselling sessions in the years before, I’d been advised to set boundaries.

I never could. At least, the boundaries I could set were small and ineffectual in the long run.

Guilt is a powerful, dangerous emotion.

When my life roles expanded beyond daughter and student, to that of wife and mother, I had to draw my proverbial line in the sand. And my fierce devotion to my son, who struggled so hard to live and come home, gave me the strength to set those final boundaries that I previously couldn’t.

The boundaries came with tonnes of emotional baggage but they gave me, my husband, and son the protection that we needed. I’m just now finding out that the consequences of my being manipulated and abused earlier extended beyond my own self. The degree to which other people were affected horrifies me. And I don’t know how I can ever make up it.

I Get Out of Bed Every Day

The fall-out from my mother’s death is ridonkculous. There will be legal issues for months to contend with, if not years. And that’s all before dealing with her hoarding of stuff and garbage.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of how I feel about her and her death.

Even though I’ve been withdrawn and functionally depressed, I still get out of bed every day as a key part of my perseverance and finding my thrive.

How can I place so much value in a simple action like getting out of bed? For me, it has to happen. It’s as plain as that.

I felt the same way when Torran (my son) was in the NICU. Mind you, sometimes this had to be a metaphorical “get out of bed.” When I was on bed rest for my pregnancy, I didn’t “get up” get up, but I did something functional every day – even if it was running a dungeon in World of Warcraft.

The point is, getting out of bed is a goal that I can reasonably achieve. Success generates a positive bio-feedback loop with hackable hormones. As long as I have working biology, why not put it to work for me? Who cares that I may not have showered, or brushed my hair, or even have changed out of my pajamas? As my godsister said, if I can get up and put on clean underwear, then I’m a superstar.

Next, I try to achieve some other monumentally small task like making a meal, or watching TV. Don’t laugh. Every daily action takes a huge amount of mental and physical effort. We just don’t realize that when we’re happy and healthy.

I Cherish My Connections

Of the many practical changes I made through the shit life has thrown at me, the biggest is connecting to people who are like-minded and caring. That’s not to say that I want to be surrounded by mindless noddies who agree with everything I say, even when I’m wrong. Instead, I strive to make myself worthy of friendship, and to return that friendship.

I seek out constructive criticism. I celebrate accomplishments of others as if they were my own. My husband and I stoutly believe that an annual holiday greeting card is still very important. I work hard to maintain relationships in a world that has so many ways to divide us. When I meet someone new, I listen more than I talk (or at least I try to).

All of these things, and more, have stopped me from being the lonely schoolgirl who sits alone crying at lunch. I’m still not perfect, but I’m not ready to give in to life’s BS without a fight.

I will persevere, and so long as the sun rises in the East, I will find my thrive.

And there’s a book in this mire somewhere.