You don’t have to be hopeful to hold

I refuse to break. At this point, I can’t in good conscience call it virtue. It’s honestly closer to spite. I do end up calling it honor because that’s the language I know. Most days it’s just a hard, quiet “no” aimed at whatever thing thought I’d fold. There’s a satisfaction in it. There’s a small, ugly pleasure in not giving the pain the ending it’s waiting for.

And still, I feel it. That whisper. Deep and persistent and ultimately stupid. The old hope that if I just keep standing here long enough, something will come over the hill. Not grace. Certainly not God. Just relief. Someone finally saying enough and taking the weight out of my hands. The cavalry, late, righteous, and in clean uniforms arriving just in time to make all this endurance mean something they didn’t earn. It’s a child’s hope, that suffering is a signal flare and that someone will come.

There’s no rescue coming. No one is watching and waiting to intervene. And even if they were, I don’t think I’d accept it now. Being saved would cheapen this. It would turn all this holding into a transaction, and I didn’t agree to terms. I didn’t hold the line for applause. I didn’t stay upright to be absolved.

So I stay.

This is my ground to hold. It always has been. Not because it’s particularly sacred, but because it’s where I was standing when everything else left. Leaving now would feel like lying. So I plant myself here and let the darker parts of endurance do their work—the resentment, the pride, the stubborn refusal to disappear quietly. I don’t have to be hopeful to hold.