Continuance

The day after the worst day, when life resumed its ordinary demands.

What kept you going when there was no particular reason to keep going.

The way routines held you when meaning was unavailable.

How you got through weeks that you would rather not remember.

What remaining present to a life looks like when the life has become difficult to inhabit.

The morning you got up and started again after you had said you were done.

A commitment that outlasted the feeling that had originally generated it.

The year you kept showing up when showing up was the only thing you had.

What sustained you in the interval between what you had lost and what had not yet arrived.

The small acts — the meals, the walks, the conversations — that accumulated into a continued life.

How you remained useful to people who needed you while privately needing something yourself.

The person who needed you to continue, and what it meant that their need was enough.

What you found, in the continuing, that you would not have found in the stopping.

The decision, never consciously made, to keep being the person you had been.

What the accumulation of ordinary days finally built, in retrospect.

How time, which seemed to be the problem, eventually became part of the solution.

The life that was possible only because you remained in it long enough.

What you were waiting for, even without knowing you were waiting.

How continuance, which felt like nothing, turned out to be everything.

What you understand about simply not stopping that you did not understand before you had to.