Well now I got the time. All that’s left to do is the work. Little by little I will do what I can do make it through. I have to figure out how but for now all I can do is the days work. If I can manage a little extra every day I can cut down the ask. It’s going to hurt all the way through. That’s fine let it hurt. Let the pain be your teacher. Understand that the body isn’t indestructible, it has its limits. The body does. The mind doesn’t. The mind can keep going. The mind can tell your body to keep moving even when the body is all out of strength. I’ve hit my limit long ago, I know that much. I haven’t had enough though. I want to see it through until the end. I want to see what it’s like to finish everything I said I was going to do. There is a madness to this desire, there is no reason but the finish line. Who cares to think of a reason. Who cares why I still keep going. I only care if I keep going.
Every day, the work is waiting. It doesn’t care about my excuses or my doubts. It’s just there, unrelenting, daring me to try again. The weight of it all feels like too much sometimes, but then I remind myself: this is the choice I’ve made. I chose this path. I chose to push, to struggle, to endure. And if I chose it, then I’ll see it through. There’s power in that, a quiet defiance in knowing that no matter how much it hurts, I’m still standing. I’m still here. I’m still moving.
The madness in me isn’t something I fear anymore. I’ve learned to lean into it, to let it drive me when nothing else will. It’s not logical; it doesn’t have to be. The finish line is all that matters, that distant point where everything I’ve done, all the pain and effort, will finally make sense. Maybe it’s not about making sense at all. Maybe it’s just about proving to myself that I can do it—that I can keep going, that I can see it through. Reason is overrated when your purpose is survival.
And what lies beyond the finish line? I don’t know, and I don’t need to. I’ve stopped looking past it. There’s a kind of peace in the singular focus of this journey. One step at a time, one task at a time, one day at a time. That’s all it is, and that’s all it needs to be. The rest of the world can wait. Right now, it’s just me and the work. The pain, the doubt, the exhaustion—they’re all part of it. They’re part of me now. But so is the strength. So is the fire that refuses to go out, no matter how much it’s tested.
When it’s all said and done, I don’t want to look back and wonder what could have been. I want to know what it feels like to give everything I had, to leave nothing behind, to cross the line and know I earned every step. That’s why I keep going. That’s why I let it hurt. Because in the end, the pain won’t matter. Only the journey will.
