There’s a moment, right before the final push, when everything inside starts screaming to stop. The summit is right there, 100 steps away, but those 100 steps stretch into 10,000. The pack on my back, a mere 6 kilos, swells into an unbearable 100. My mind turns against me, whispering all the reasons why this was a bad idea to begin with.
Every time, the battle is the same. Every time, the answer is the same.
Keep going.
Not because someone is watching. Not because there’s applause waiting at the end. Not because of some grand meaning that will be revealed at the top. Just because stopping isn’t an option anymore.
For too long, stopping meant sinking. It meant disappearing into a version of myself that shrank to fit someone else’s comfort. It meant negotiating my worth like a bad business deal—offering more, asking for less, believing that if I could just be more accommodating, more agreeable, more easy to love, things would work out.
They didn’t. And they won’t. Because love isn’t something you win by self-abandonment.
Somewhere between learning how to climb mountains and learning how to sit still with myself, something clicked. This life is mine. No one else is coming to save it, and no one else should. It doesn’t mean walking away from people. It means walking towards myself.
There’s a strange freedom in realizing that the worst-case scenario already happened. The thing feared the most—losing something that felt irreplaceable—happened. And yet, the world kept spinning. The ground didn’t crack open. The body still breathed. The heart still beat.
Which means, the weight that felt unbearable wasn’t real. It was just fear in disguise. A fear that, for years, held the power to dictate what was acceptable, what was forgivable, what was worth fighting for.
Turns out, it was never about being worth fighting for. It was about finally stepping into the ring for myself. No more half-hearted efforts. No more trying to earn a place at a table that should have been mine from the start.
There’s still work to do. Old patterns don’t vanish overnight. They creep in, disguised as second chances, as compromises, as familiar comforts that ask for just a little more sacrifice. The difference now? The answer isn’t changing.
Keep going.
All the way through. No stopping at 90% anymore. No making 100 steps feel like 10,000. No more pretending that suffering is proof of love.
There’s a summit waiting. And this time, getting there is non-negotiable.
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