[AnxiouslyEngaged]

After reading your post, and commiserating so completely (just like Dominus and Dave42), I couldn't help but think of snowboarding. No, wait, here me out.

Have you ever snowboarded? If you have, then you know, but I assume you haven't. It's not like skiing--they've got it easy their first day. No, it's horrible, the first day on the board. You fall constantly. I'm talking every few seconds--more, even. You fall and fall and fall. For the first hour that I snowboarded, I would stay down for sometimes up to ten minutes. Just sitting there, trying to figure out how to not fall again the next time I got up. Then I'd get up...and fall immediately back down. Then I'd sit there again, thinking, there's gotta be a way to stay up for a while this time. There wasn't. At least, there was no way that I could figure out. When I got to the bottom, finally, I got on the lift and made a commitment. I thought, no matter what, I'm just going to get right back up every single time I fall. No sitting in the snow trying to figure out how the hell I'm not going to fall down again. Just get back up. Well, I made it down the slopes in less than one fifth the time by doing just that. I fell a LOT, but I just jumped right back up and didn't worry about it. My whole focus was on staying up.

Now, when I go boarding, I usually don't fall. But, because I've gotten better, when I fall, I really fall. I land hard and painfully. It usually knocks the wind out of me, and I get dizzy. So sometimes it takes a little bit to get my breath and balance back well enough to get back up. But it happens less and less often. And I learned my lesson in that very first hour. Just get back up as quick as possible. Because each second I'm sitting in the snow is a second I'm not carving through it, feeling the wind on my face and enjoying the ride. What a waste, right?

It sounds like you're doing just that already though, and good for you. Here's the thing: you've had a lot of practice falling down and getting back up. You're getting pretty good at staying up. Pretty soon, you won't fall down any more. Just remember why you're getting up, why you're still fighting. It's so you can feel the wind in your face, so you can breathe in the fresh, crisp air. It's so you can be free.