Keep Your Head Up
Just because things look bleak now, doesn’t mean your future does.
There was a time in my life where everything seemed impossible. I had just gotten out of the military, and I had to start all over again. I had to find a new apartment, get a new car, and I started a new relationship. Though all of these things seemed like additives, the issues in my life slowly unraveled until I felt like I was sinking in a pit that I would never get out of.
First, I realized how difficult it was to take care of two people. Prior to the military, I hadn’t had an apartment, so I wasn’t used to paying rent or utilities. I also wasn’t used to paying for groceries. These were all additives that they provided you with when you were in the service. On top of that, I had a car payment. Every car that I had prior to being in the military had been paid off. I hadn’t paid car insurance growing up, and I didn’t know a thing about car payments. To make things worse, I had credit card debt from when I was in the military. One of my girlfriends at the time had convinced me that credit cards would help with everyday expenses, and since I didn’t have any money management skills or learn about the downsides of having a credit card earlier, I had outstanding debt from having them. I was so in debt that I didn’t even have the money to take care of myself, and now, with another person to worry about, I didn’t know how I was going to do it.
I worked in fast food at that time as that was the only work experience that I had besides working for a hotel and my military experience. I knew that I could get the job fast, and I knew that they would put me to work right away. So, I did my best to get as many hours as I could, hoping that the small amount of money that I was earning would add up to enough to make ends meet. However, I found out quickly that this wasn’t going to work, and the number of hours that I was working without eating anything made me sick and weak, making it difficult to press on.
So, with no idea on what to do next, I put on the only nice clothes that I had, a pair of khakis that were too short and a nice shirt that probably didn’t match, and I drove over to the local gas station to ask for a job. See, back then, my pay was about five dollars an hour, and I had heard that the gas station might have better pay. I was right. The man inside interviewed me right away. He gave me a drug test while I was there, and I was hired at eight dollars an hour.
I was elated. I don’t even know if the person that had won the lottery at that time was as excited as I was. I was finally going to have a little more money to pay the bills. I had it all planned out. I would work at the fast food place, and I would work at the gas station at the same time. Doing that would give me enough money to pay the bills, and I wouldn’t have to worry about the debt that I had incurred, because I would just pay it all off. I did my best to follow my plan, but a few things happened along the way.
First, my girlfriend wrecked my car. It was an accident, but it left me with a $17,000 bill that I couldn’t pay on top of the other bills that I already had. It also meant that I had to walk to work. Then, my furnace crapped out, leaving my apartment fairly cold and jeopardizing my already fragile health. A family member gave me a space heater to get by, which was nice, but things were already beginning to spiral back out of control.
While I was worried about my work schedule, the car, and the furnace, I was still going to school as well. I had gotten enrolled at a local college that wanted me to be there in the morning for class, and with everything going downhill, I ended up dropping out after the semester ended. Then, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I was left to my own devices. I was lonely, cold, carless, and left without both a girlfriend and education. Things really seemed bad at that point. I was getting really sick because my body couldn’t keep up with my schedule, and my bills still weren’t paid off.
Then, the blessings started rolling in. First of all, there was an older woman at my work who offered to take me to get another car. I told her that I didn’t have the money, but I kept her offer in mind in case I got to the point that I did. Then, I checked my mailbox and found not only a $2,000 stimulus check that I didn’t even know was being sent out but information on my GAP insurance. See, I had signed up for GAP insurance not really knowing what it was, and I quickly found out that the insurance was willing to pay the remaining amount that I owed on my car plus give me money for the payments that I had already made. This canceled the debt that I thought that I would owe on the wrecked car, and it gave me money to put down for a new one. On top of that, I also had $2,000 to help me with my bills, which really came in handy.
I ended up getting a new car and paying off some bills, and then my boss at the gas station asked me if I would work full-time for him and get rid of my job at the food service place. I agreed. It had gotten too tiresome to go back and forth from one place to another, and concentrating on the job that paid the most might get me closer to my goal of paying off my bills. This turned out to be a good thing, because after quitting the food service job, my health seemed to recover.
After that, I found out through conversation that I needed to notify the maintenance at my apartment complex in regards to the broken furnace. Again, I had never rented a place before. I didn’t know that they had maintenance there to fix broken appliances, so the thought of doing that had never crossed my mind. I made the call, and my heat was back on, creating a cozier sleeping situation for me when I got home.
The last thing that happened occurred when I decided to pick up a part-time census job. I don’t remember how I found the job, but I do remember that it paid fourteen dollars an hour, something that I needed at that point. I went to the training after being accepted for the job, and I was thankful for not only the opportunity to help the community but the chance to be part of something bigger again like I was in the military. During training, I met a woman that happened to be a retired master sergeant. We bonded over our experiences, and she informed me that the place where we were attending training was one of the good colleges in the area.
I told her about my college experience, and I explained that I had to drop out not only due to my lack of time but due to the financial situation that I was in. She informed me that the military offered a GI Bill that would help pay so I could attend college. I asked her for more information on it, and she told me to go to the registrar’s office and see if I qualified. So, during one of the breaks that we had in our training class, I went to the college’s registrar’s office and asked them. As it turned out, she was right. I did qualify, and by qualifying in that program, I had another shot at being able to go back to college. Not only that, but the classes that they had were online, so they would be able to work with my work schedule.
I signed up for college, choosing a path in counseling as I had already explored both teaching and theatre at the other college I attended, and I started to go to school. At this point, life really picked up. I had a good job. I was going to school. I had heat in my apartment, and I had been able to get a new car after my other one was totaled. I felt like I had a whole new lease on life, and if someone had told me a few months ago that I would have the life that I did, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Continuing forward even through the troubled times made a difference and so did the several blessings on the way. If I had given up early, I wouldn't have been able to experience what was waiting for me on the other side of all of that hardship and I may have never known that things truly could get better.
About the Creator
Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue
Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue is a lesfic author at amzn.to/36DFT2x. Sign-up for her newsletter at higginbothampublications.com
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Old Dogs and New Tricks
When I grew up, there was a big push to educate yourself before you were old enough to live outside of the home. This created the misconception for some that after you were on your own, you knew what you knew and lost the opportunity to learn more. Though I did well in school, there were still several things that I didn’t know how to do. One of those things was how to cook a real meal. You see, I grew up in a household with a vegetarian and a younger child that wouldn’t eat certain foods. So, the dishes that won the hearts of the children in the house were cheese sandwiches, cheese pizza, cheese roll-ups, and butter noodles. Then, when we did make a bigger meal, at least during the week, it was usually hamburger helper. This left me with few cooking skills, because when I made food for my siblings, there wasn’t much of a selection of things that I could make. Eventually, I ended up living on my own, and I expanded the items on my menu to chicken that I would fry in oil and anything that I could buy in a packet and add water or milk too. Even when I made dinner for my friends or women that I was dating, I usually cooked the same meal, give or take switching up the packaged pasta. To say the least, I didn’t really cook that much. I relied heavily on drive-thrus or food that I could buy from my work, and I didn’t have a good diet or the knowledge to know how to cook at home to save money. When my wife and I first got together, I showed her my special chicken dish, and she really liked the chicken. However, after a while, I found out that she knew how to make several dishes that I didn’t and was used to eating a completely different diet than I was. She would make casseroles and tacos. She would even fancy up a couple of burgers and make pasta dishes that I had never made in my entire life. I never had to worry about food, because I knew that she would cook it, but when I began my journey as a stay at home mom and writer, that changed. My wife was working a horrendous amount of hours at that time, and it just didn’t seem fair to have her working all of those hours to come home and have to cook her own dinner. My grandma always had dinner on the table for my grandpa. She was an excellent cook, and I knew that none of her children had to worry about eating when they were younger, so I sought out to do the same for my family. I wanted to learn to cook so I could feed my wife and children. I just needed to figure out how I was going to do that. That’s when it dawned on me. I remembered watching a food channel a few years back with a woman that I had been dating at the time, and I thought that if I could just watch that channel, I might learn a thing or two about how to make a meal. I started to do this, bound and determined to learn new skills that would help me around the house. I even found a couple of shows that my spouse and I could watch together. It worked. I ended up getting a ton of information from watching these shows, and I even began asking my grandma for recipes and looking up new dishes online. I would experiment with new dishes that I liked such as chicken and cheese jalapeno corn chowder and bacon fried potatoes and cheese. My wife loved the new array of food choices, and she usually had something to put in her belly after she got off of her long shifts at work. Throughout the years, my cooking has gotten better, and I have taken a real interest in learning how to make dishes that we have enjoyed in restaurants and so on. I even make a lot of the food that we take with us when we go to grill outs or have people over for the holidays. However, without the knowledge that I could still learn this new skill, I wouldn’t be able to do what I can now. So, I am thankful that I was able to push forward in learning this new skill and for the inspiration that I got from my wife and my grandma.
By Nicole Higginbotham-Hogueabout a year ago in Motivation
Looking back: 2025 was a beast
It's difficult to know how to start this. I've suggested that it's been a tough one from my title and in many ways, it has; however, there is an argument that it's not been that extraordinary at all, merely this wonderful thing we call "life" with all its climaxes and pitfalls.
By Rachel Deeming22 days ago in Motivation
“One Day, I Realized Nobody Was Coming to Save Me—So I Saved Myself”
For the longest time, I believed my life was simply paused. Not broken. Not finished. Just waiting. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for the right person. Waiting for something—anything—to arrive and change everything. I didn’t know exactly what I was waiting for, but I was sure it would come. People always said things like “It’ll get better” or “Your time will come”, and I clung to those words like promises written in invisible ink. I believed that if I endured long enough, life would eventually reward my patience. So I waited. I waited quietly, because I didn’t want to be a burden. I waited politely, because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I waited silently, because I didn’t even know how to explain what was wrong. From the outside, my life looked acceptable. I functioned. I showed up. I smiled when it was expected of me. I laughed at jokes that didn’t reach my heart. I answered “I’m fine” so often that it started to feel like muscle memory. But inside, something was eroding. Every day felt heavier than the last, like I was carrying a weight that kept growing while no one was looking. I woke up tired, went to bed tired, and spent the hours in between pretending I wasn’t. There was a quiet exhaustion that sleep couldn’t touch—a tiredness that came from constantly hoping for relief that never arrived. I thought suffering had to be loud to be real. I thought pain needed witnesses to matter. Mine had neither. There was no dramatic breaking point, no single moment when everything fell apart. Instead, it unraveled slowly. Almost gently. Like a thread pulled so gradually you don’t notice the fabric weakening until it’s too late. I kept telling myself, Just hold on a little longer. Surely someone would notice. Surely someone would step in. Surely life wouldn’t let me keep feeling this way forever. But life did. And then one day—an ordinary day that didn’t announce its importance—I realized something that changed everything. Nobody was coming. That realization didn’t arrive with clarity or relief. It arrived like grief. Heavy. Sharp. Unforgiving. I remember sitting alone, staring at nothing in particular, and feeling the truth settle into my bones. There would be no rescue. No sudden turning point delivered by someone else’s effort. No moment where everything magically aligned and lifted me out of my own life. It wasn’t that people didn’t care. It was that everyone was busy surviving their own storms. I had been waiting for someone to save me from a life that only I was living. And for a while, that realization shattered me. I felt abandoned by the world, betrayed by hope itself. I questioned every prayer I had whispered into the dark, every moment I had chosen patience over action. I wondered if I had misunderstood life completely—if the promises I believed in were never meant for people like me. I mourned the version of myself who thought endurance alone was enough. There is a special kind of loneliness that comes from realizing your pain is invisible. That no matter how heavy it feels to you, the world keeps moving at the same pace. Bills still need to be paid. Responsibilities still demand attention. Smiles are still expected. So I kept going. But something inside me had cracked open. Once you see the truth, you can’t unsee it. And the truth was this: waiting had become my hiding place. Hope, without action, had become an excuse to stay small. I had been standing still, convincing myself that stillness was strength. It wasn’t. Saving myself didn’t begin with confidence. It began with fear. Fear of staying the same. Fear of waking up ten years later in the same emotional place. Fear of realizing that I had wasted my own life waiting for permission to live it. I didn’t suddenly become brave. I became tired of being helpless. The first steps were almost embarrassing in their simplicity. There was nothing poetic about them. No montage-worthy transformation. Just small decisions that felt enormous at the time. Getting out of bed even when my body begged me not to. Choosing one task, then another, then another. Letting myself admit—quietly—that I was not okay. Some days, saving myself meant setting boundaries that made other people uncomfortable. I learned how often my exhaustion came from overextending myself to earn love, approval, or relevance. Saying no felt selfish at first. It felt wrong. But it also felt like oxygen. Other days, saving myself meant sitting alone with my feelings instead of numbing them. No distractions. No pretending. Just honesty. That was harder than any physical effort I had ever made. Facing your own thoughts can feel like standing in front of a mirror that refuses to lie. I began to understand something no one had taught me: healing is not linear, and it is rarely beautiful. It’s messy. Inconsistent. Frustrating. Some days feel like progress, others feel like failure. But both are part of the same road. There were days I missed the comfort of waiting. Waiting meant responsibility belonged to someone else. Taking control meant accepting that my life—every imperfect part of it—was in my hands. That was terrifying. But it was also freeing. As I slowly rebuilt myself, I noticed something else. Not everyone wanted to walk with me into this new version of myself. Some people preferred the me who needed saving. The me who was easier to control, easier to dismiss, easier to define. Outgrowing people hurts. Outgrowing places hurts. Outgrowing old versions of yourself hurts most of all. But staying the same hurts longer. I lost connections I thought were permanent. I stepped away from spaces that no longer fit who I was becoming. Loneliness returned—but this time, it was different. This loneliness felt honest. It didn’t come from abandonment; it came from alignment. I learned that being alone while growing is far healthier than being surrounded while shrinking. Strength, I discovered, isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t demand recognition. Strength shows up quietly, day after day, in the choices you make when no one is watching. It shows up when you keep going even though the results are slow. When you forgive yourself for falling back into old habits. When you choose patience with yourself instead of punishment. There were setbacks—many of them. I stumbled. I doubted myself. I wondered if I was doing everything wrong. But this time, I didn’t collapse and wait for someone else to fix the damage. I picked myself up. Again and again. And something unexpected happened as I kept choosing myself: the world didn’t suddenly become easier, but I became stronger. Problems that once felt unbearable became manageable. Pain that once consumed me became something I could sit with without losing myself. I stopped asking, Why is this happening to me? I started asking, What can I do with what’s happening? That question changed everything. Today, my life is not perfect. I still have days when old fears resurface. I still feel tired sometimes. I still wish things were easier. But I no longer wait for rescue. I trust myself now. I trust that even if things fall apart, I will be there to put them back together. I trust that my worth doesn’t depend on who shows up for me. I trust that I am capable of building a life that feels like my own. And maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is this: realizing nobody is coming to save you is not a sentence. It’s an invitation. An invitation to stop shrinking. An invitation to take responsibility for your healing. An invitation to become the person you’ve been waiting for. If you’re reading this and you feel stuck—if you feel invisible, exhausted, or quietly breaking—I want you to know this: you are not weak for waiting. You were doing the best you could with what you knew. But you don’t have to wait anymore. Sometimes, saving yourself doesn’t mean changing everything. It means choosing yourself once—then choosing yourself again tomorrow. And one day, you’ll look back and realize that the moment nobody came was the moment your life truly began.Start writing...
By Ihtisham Ulhaq7 days ago in Motivation
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