Perseverance—an easy word to understand. You know it tells you not to give up and to hold onto your life with a Ben Stiller Kung-Fu grip. It tells you that it could always be worse; tells you that you can only recognize how important something is to you if you have to fight for it. To persevere is to remain purposely stubborn to the obstacles of life. Perseverance is the rise of mediocrity to unforeseen levels of achievement and the fulfillment of every ambition once filled to the brim with doubt. It is hope amidst a sea of doubt crashing down upon you.

He could express himself for hours with wholehearted, emotive speech, but his thoughts and emotions have compounded so severely and  accrued as a tremendous burden of interest on an account now due, becoming encumbering and overwhelming beyond the point of comprehension. This immediate withdrawal of emotion was done so in spite of empty emotional reserves. He felt it, now, that his intelligence and resolve had been slowly chipped away, slowly ebbing until the arrival of this final threshold-- the wrong threshold; the threshold at the opposite end of the spectrum where one doesn’t peak his capabilities and transcend any lesser values, but where one finds a dark, intensely ordinary room, with a faint remnant of indignation and reprove that seems evanescent, but lingers interminably without mistake; a threshold that presents a hole through which to escape but which does not hold escape as permissible. It is here in this darkness that his thoughts and emotions have transmuted into liquid form. No eloquence on his behalf could genuinely surpass the simultaneous expression of a tear and gravity, together as one simple manifestation to create an understanding between all parties. A liquid manifestation that holds a word in every passing molecule of every passing drop; a flow so richly concentrated with emotion, words and ideals, that the trappings of ambition and intuition are held evident as they descend slowly and sinuously,  with purpose and destination,  toward gravity’s predetermined destination.

After such devastation—torture—and such adversities and misfortunes, even in the presence of the source of it all, what  was mustered was an apology for inconveniencing those present with an uncontrollable display of weakness; of a complete and utter degradation. An apology derived from a benevolence that scintillates as the ocean’s surface on the brightest of days; of days that have no boundaries and no sign of ever ending. It was an apology of self-immolation that exonerates the guiltiest scoundrels but in turn proves one’s worth; it was an apology that released the utterly noxious and pernicious behaviors that had soaked into his skin like the scent of gasoline. He pictured himself atop a grassy knoll, beleaguered, completely helpless, save a defiant truth:  that he is capable of suffering twice that of the next man and that he knew the cause of his suffering better than those tormenting him.

His thoughts shifted quickly to the future: “All I am and all I’ll ever be… I hope when I find you I’ll have enough left of me to give you what you deserve; be the sun in your sky, the Lavoisier of our chemistry.” He sat alone in his room, his arms crossed in his lap, with the light on and his chair unremarkably still, as if in agreement with the floor. His room reflected his current psychological state: clothes strewn about over dressers instead of in them, a guitar propped against the bed, a plate from last night’s dinner, homework scattered irrelevantly across the desk and the trash he forgot to take out yesterday.

“What will I have left to offer to the ones I feel worthy of my best?—nothing more than a jaded sentiment that encapsulates a disfigured capitulation? There must be a point to all this—there has to be. I’ve never tried to hurt anyone, but here I sit. I’ll I ever wanted was to be my best, to deserve someone and to be deserved.” He thought about everything life had given him, but couldn’t help but to think about everything life had jerked out from under him, leaving him to fight gravity and reclaim his posture time and time again. He held, as an unwavering light of verity, the fact that the most painful memories he had were the ones where his dreams had been shattered like a sheet of glass across a mountainside; memories of unbridled ability and potential squandered by no fault of his own, left as shards of multicolored glass that marked painfully vivid reminders of the affect of others on his life.

The pinnacle of his character manifested in the form of restraint. No matter how much he suffered, nobody saw it. Bereft of almost any satisfaction or hope, he clung to his morals and ambitions knowing that who he had come to be was something he never wanted to be. Yet, in a way he was coming to understand, he knew he was more now than he ever thought he would be. He was, after all of the anguish, coming to understand something that had an ominous, apocalyptic feeling. The strange thing was that he knew the apocalypse would be what he would see in the glossy reflection of careless eyes; no apocalypse would lay claim to him. What he was seeing were the eyes of everyone that fell upon him; eyes witnessing something they could not comprehend; something naked to the eye, yet undistinguishable.

He sat in quiet repose, not moving from the chair, stopped his hand from supporting his sunken head and unfixed his eyes from his lap.

He smelled the banana peel which he had eaten just before slipping into this sullen stupor. He rose, picked up the plate and the banana peel and strode across the room towards the trash can. He pivoted to the dresser, stopping only to silently reprove the unkempt clothing. He folded and returned each article of clothing to its right place with seamless motions that attested to a limitless proficiency.  

He moved intently to be seated once again, as if to return to an undisturbed place in time, as if he had never left the chair and had remained immersed in his introspection despite all of his purpose-filled movements.

He slowly rotated his head to look out the window from his building; from his room; from inside his mind. His eyes followed ordinary people around their predetermined courses of pavement in their predetermined manners. His lips curled slowly upward and out to form an omniscient, understanding countenance that was centered about his smile; the most important smile of his life.

Sill gazing out the window, he thought to himself: “All of this-- this suffering… I’ve endured it and it has made me a better person. One day I’ll meet you and you will recognize me. You’ll see me because you’re even more than I am. You’ll see me because I will reflect your ambitions and morals, because you’ll never have to ask anything of me and you’ll never have to wonder why. You’ll know me when you first look into my eyes; you’ll know because I am defined.

I am perseverance.