Something I struggle with is the question of if I'm 'strong' or 'weak'.
Not to steel-ball-run my words but I mean in the sense of a protagonist. Some protagonists have a mind of steel. They take hardship on the chin and take on the burden of responsibility, or honor, or martyrdom. The stories I love to read the most are characters with little to no talent. They grind at the wall of talent and background until nothing remains, through the power of concerted effort and their only true talent of the iron will.
But I don't have that. I never have. I don't even find it relatable. I have spent my entire life keenly aware of it. I coast on talent, I lean on familial benefits, I give up when the going gets tough, and I choose the path of least resistance and most stability.
When I grew up the faculty of my school always would put the word GRIT on the walls. This hard won effort and willingness to endure that they advertised as the height of true internal strength. At the time, I was far too mentally ill, and found it insulting. Don't they know that some people can't afford effort?
Then time passed. I stamped down some illnesses and corralled some others, I become a new man a dozen times. And every time I'd check. Just maybe I'm strong now. Please. Please make me someone who can withstand hardship. Because I lived in fear of falling into hard times and being unwilling to survive them.
Other people lived in spite of circumstance. They fought and whether they win or lose it let them grow as a person. I just built myself from spare parts. I did not grow organically, I just kept replacing pieces of myself until I looked like a real person.
So I wondered. Did I live well under an unfathomable weight, and now I simply do not feel it? Or have I always lived it on easy street, whining over something small? Or is it some combination, and if so, am I stronger than I was when I was younger? Or have I grown complacent?
It's meaningless. I know it is. There's no way to quantify it. I'll just have to live without knowing if what I'm fighting is strong enough to warrant my current standard of suffering.