The Day I Almost Gave Up, and Why I Didn't"

There’s a particular kind of silence that follows a dream breaking—not the peaceful kind, but the type that hums in your ears and presses against your chest like a weight you can’t shake. I heard that silence on a gray Tuesday morning in February, staring at my laptop in the corner of my one-bedroom apartment, a cup of cold coffee at my side and an unopened rejection email blinking on my screen.

It was the sixth rejection that month. The thirty-second in a row, to be exact.

I had been chasing a writing career for over three years—articles, pitches, short stories, anything I could get into a magazine, journal, or blog that would publish me. I wasn’t aiming for fame. I just wanted to be read. To be heard. But that morning, I sat in sweatpants, surrounded by drafts and outlines and unpaid bills, wondering if maybe the world was trying to tell me something.

Maybe this wasn’t meant to be.

I thought about the job I had left behind. A safe, steady position in corporate marketing. It wasn’t soul-crushing, exactly, but every morning I walked into that building, a piece of me disappeared. So, when I’d finally saved enough to last six months, I left. I remember the rush of excitement as I turned in my resignation letter. I felt brave. I felt alive. And for the first few months, even the struggle felt exhilarating.

But over time, when the initial thrill wore off, when emails went unanswered and the silence of “no reply” echoed louder than outright rejections, the self-doubt crept in. I stopped sharing my work with friends. I stopped calling home. I stopped writing with joy and started writing with desperation—trying to guess what editors wanted, trying to shape my voice into something more marketable, less me.

That morning, I hovered over the “Apply” button for a part-time data entry job. It paid decently. It came with health benefits. It had nothing to do with writing.

And I almost clicked.

Then something strange happened.

A notification pinged on my phone—a message from an old college friend I hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Hey. Random, but I read one of your essays that popped up on my feed. About your dad and the hospital waiting room. I just wanted to say it meant a lot. My mom’s going through something similar, and your words helped me feel less alone.”

I stared at the message, read it three times, and felt a lump rise in my throat. It wasn’t a job offer. It wasn’t a publishing contract. But in that moment, it was everything.

I had written that piece in a flurry one night after visiting my father in the ICU. I hadn’t even thought it was good. But I’d posted it anyway, quietly, without fanfare. And somehow, it had found its way to someone who needed it.

That’s when I realized something I’d forgotten along the way: I didn’t start writing to get bylines or accolades. I started because I needed to make sense of the chaos in my head. Because stories, to me, were a lifeline. And every now and then, if I was lucky, they became a lifeline for someone else, too.

I closed the job listing. Not because I had suddenly become successful or because the path forward was suddenly clear—but because I remembered why I started. And sometimes, that’s enough.

Don’t get me wrong. That didn’t fix everything.

There were still days when I questioned myself. Still months where I barely scraped by. But I kept going.

I got a part-time tutoring gig that paid the bills. I gave myself permission to write badly again—to write from the heart, not from fear. I started submitting to small, indie publications without worrying if they were “big enough” to count. And bit by bit, things shifted.

One day, an editor from a mental health blog reached out, asking if I’d be interested in contributing regularly. Then a podcast invited me to speak about grief and storytelling. Then I got paid—not much, but something—for an essay I wrote about my mother’s old garden and the way it smelled in June.

And eventually, I started to believe in myself again—not because of external validation, but because I stopped measuring my worth by how far I’d gotten and started measuring it by how much I’d grown.

Now, years later, when I look back on that gray Tuesday, I don’t see failure. I see the edge of something important. The moment before the climb. The heartbeat before the breakthrough.

I learned that the day you almost give up is often the day you’re closest to something real.

Sometimes the breakthrough doesn’t come as a big success—it comes as a quiet message from an old friend. A reminder that your words matter. That you matter.

And that’s what kept me going.

Reflection

The world often romanticizes perseverance—showing us highlight reels of success without the backstory of struggle. But real grit, real resilience, is often quiet. It looks like unpaid bills and tear-stained keyboards. It looks like almost giving up—but choosing not to.

It’s not always glamorous. But it’s yours.

So, if you’re on the verge of giving up, let me offer this: pause, breathe, and remember your “why.” It doesn’t have to be loud. It just has to be real.

Because sometimes, the reason you don’t quit is as simple as knowing that your story—flawed, beautiful, and unfinished—is not over yet.