I am not a failure, but a survivor. I am daily in the process of surviving.

Survival gets pictured as a single dramatic event — the lifeboat, the rescue, the moment on the news. Mostly it's an admin job done daily and indefinitely: meals arranged, medication counted, a shift covered, the same three phone calls chased for a fourth week.

Nobody claps for that, which is why it gets filed so easily as failing. The evidence says otherwise. You are here, at whatever cost, having done the whole unglamorous list again today. That is not what failing looks like. Failing is a considerably easier day than the one you have just had.