Quitting is an Option

Have you ever wanted to quit something but suffered through anyway because someone told you you’d be a failure if you quit?

Well, don’t listen to them. They’re not necessarily correct.

I recently called it quits. 

Up to now, I’m not what anyone would consider a quitter. Perhaps that’s because, contrary to popular opinion, quitting is hard, not easy. Quitting is not simply giving up or admitting failure.

No one needs to encourage me to keep going. Keeping going despite endless failures and unhappiness, pain and sadness is the normal human tendency, especially mine. 

So it’s quitting that’s hard. That means that you have to make a change. Stop and do something else. That’s the opposite of physics law which states that objects in motion stay in motion. I had to exert a lot of effort and determination to quit. I had to accept and acknowledge that my life will be drastically different going forward. 

Furthermore, this change comes after a lifetime of struggle for the same thing. The struggle for a loving, or at least, peaceable, relationship with my mother. After growing up with an unloving, narcissist mother who never said “I love you,” or “You’re beautiful,” who never hugged or kissed, but instead said things like, “No matter how many A’s you get in school, you’ll always be stupid, “ and “You’re ugly…you look just like your dad,” and “You’re the devil’s child,” I thought that perhaps in adulthood, our relationship could evolve at least into an amicable one without dwelling into the past. 

Post college, it took 10 years of estrangement before I made the attempt to reconnect with my mother. Over several years, this reconnection was rocky yet I persevered in an attempt to find some meaning in a relationship like other people have with their mothers. Finally, though, after several episodes of her pointing her finger at me and saying, “Don’t talk down to me….don’t you EVER talk down to me…” I realized she will never change. 

As a narcissist, she likes the idea of a daughter, but she doesn’t know the first thing about how to love someone, or even truly like someone.  For my own self-preservation and whatever self-esteem I have left, I have to walk away…for good.

Quitting isn’t failure. Instead, you fail yourself when you don’t stop the pain. Sometimes quitting is success.