Peculiar gasping noises are coming from his throat, and he seems to have no control over them, no way of stopping them, and a slick of sweat is breaking out of his brow, down his back, and he doesn’t know how there is moisture enough in him for that, but the body is a curious thing, what it can survive, how it continues to breathe and exist despite everything.

For Tomás, it seemed, had decided he was going to live; he had discovered, to his faint surprise, that within him was an inexplicable but strong urge to survive. It gushed through his veins, lit up the branched tangles of his brain. It seized him by the scruff each morning and hauled him to his feet. He would not be going under, it told him, he would get out of here and live his life.

“For most of my life, I believed survival was the story. That getting out of Detroit, getting the right degrees and titles, and achieving a certain level of success was the ‘work.’ That outrunning my past was the answer. But healing asks us to sit still and stay with ourselves.”

Those who’ve never suffered often mistake scars of survival for defects.

#Who perseveres wins

#Perseverare/Persevere