From the archive

Be a monster

But “it hurts because it's supposed to” can easily turn into a stupid religion too. You can spend years putting up with something you should have left long ago and take pride in your endurance. You can destroy yourself with work and call it proof of how serious you are. When you're rebuilding your life after setbacks, I'm interested in what you're enduring it for, and what changes as a result. If you're learning, building, breaking free of a dependency, part of the process may be hard. If you're just letting people walk all over you again, extra pain won't make it useful.