Human Enough to Try Again

There are moments when life doesn’t fall apart in a dramatic crash, but in quiet, almost unnoticeable ways. A conversation that ends too soon. A plan that quietly fails. A version of yourself that slips away before you even realize it. For me, the unraveling happened during an ordinary Tuesday in early spring, when the world still smelled faintly of thawing soil and supermarket tulips.

I had just finished a long shift at the cafe where I worked. My shoes were sticky with dried coffee and my patience was worn thin from a dozen tiny annoyances. A customer complaining about the temperature of her latte. A coworker calling in sick. A manager who didn’t look me in the eye. All minor things, but sometimes minor things pile up until you feel like you’re carrying a mountain you never agreed to climb.

When I got home, I sat on the kitchen floor. Not the chair, not the couch. The floor. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t dramatic. I was simply tired in a way that made me feel hollow rather than sad. It hit me, unexpectedly, that I wasn’t living the life I once promised myself.

I had dreams once. Big ones, goofy ones, almost embarrassing ones. I wanted to study film. I wanted to write stories. I wanted to travel or at least take a train to a city I’d never been to before. Instead, I was counting coins in my apron pocket to see if I could afford another week of groceries.

My mother always said that adulthood comes with two choices: either give up on the person you wanted to be or be human enough to try again. At the time I never understood what she meant. I saw trying again as easy, like restarting a game. But now, sitting on the cold tiles with the refrigerator humming in the background, I realized that starting over is the bravest form of honesty. It means admitting you want more. And admitting you want more is terrifying.

That night, I didn’t make any big promises. No dramatic declarations about changing my life. I simply opened my old laptop and found a folder titled “Someday.” Inside were unfinished scripts, half-written essays, and story ideas scribbled at 3 a.m. when I still believed in them. I opened one at random. It was about a girl who works in a bakery and dreams of becoming a filmmaker.

I almost laughed at the simplicity of it.

But something in me softened. If past-me still believed in her, maybe present-me could at least try.

The next morning, I woke up earlier than usual. I brewed a cup of coffee and wrote exactly 327 words before leaving for work. They weren’t good words. They weren’t even coherent. But they were mine, and they were new, and they were proof that I wasn’t as stuck as I thought.

Days passed. Then weeks.

Some mornings I wrote nothing. Some evenings I convinced myself it was all pointless. But every time I felt myself slipping back into old patterns, I remembered something my friend Elena once told me: “Trying again isn’t a one-time act. It’s a muscle.”

Her words made sense in ways that felt almost annoyingly true. Each attempt, whether small or embarrassing or fragile, was a flex. A tiny movement forward. A way of reminding myself that there was still a version of me who believed in possibilities.

One night, after a particularly exhausting shift, I found myself on a bench just outside the cafe. The city around me buzzed with its usual nighttime rhythm. Cars passing. People laughing. Windows glowing like constellations of strangers’ lives. I leaned back and let the cool air settle around my shoulders.

I thought about everything I had failed at. The classes I couldn’t afford. The creative projects that never left the idea stage. The dreams I had placed on hold and then forgotten. My heart felt heavy, but not in a way that crushed me. It felt heavy like something being reshaped.

I realized then that being human isn’t about winning. It’s not about achieving everything or proving anything. It’s about continuing. It’s about trying again even when you don’t know if the attempt will matter.

Two months later, I submitted my first short story to a small online publication. It didn’t get accepted. I read the rejection email twice, then again, waiting for the disappointment to swallow me. It didn’t. Instead, I opened a new document and wrote another piece. I don’t know why. I just knew I needed to.

And somehow, that was enough.

Looking back now, I see that the shift wasn’t in my circumstances but in my willingness to begin again, even clumsily. I learned that the most courageous thing any of us can do is show up one more time when the world has convinced us it doesn’t matter.

Because it does matter.

You matter.

Your attempts matter.

Every small restart, every quiet decision to begin again, every moment you refuse to let the story end halfway through — it all counts.

We’re all a little bruised by life, a little lost, a little older than we thought we’d be by the time we found our way. But we are also human enough to try again. And that, I’ve learned, is more than enough to change everything.