Wall climbing

The pain in my muscles was excruciating. I felt like giving up, felt like letting go and just letting myself fall with gravity. It would have been an easy way out, just giving up and admit to myself I can't do it.

The pain made me break out in sweat all over. I felt like my arms were going to break, and that the fingers were going to snap. Altitude and gravity makes you feel so small an weak. One slip, and if I weren't safely secured to a rope which my friend held onto tightly,
I could have plummeted to my... downfall.

"I can't do it... I just can't do it..." I heard the weak self nag and echo in my head.

But I saw images of what happened at the hospital. I saw my sick mother lying there... I saw me crying because I was weak and afraid. "I can do it! I CAN do it!!"

And it was as If I found renewed strength from nowhere, as if the tiredness and soreness of my limbs and the scrapes and cuts of my skin and (slight) bleeding meant very little.

Before my eyes were images of moments with mum at the hospital. Those were truly testing times... Those were truly difficult times that were painful, truly painful (though not to forget, beautiful memories resulted from those times as well...)

I pulled myself up, reached further and hung on tighter despite the aches in my fingers and joints. I pushed myself to the limit, the way I was often pushed to the limit mentally over the past few years. And I made it to the top.

I screamed and cried out of excitement and a sense of achievement. I felt good to be alive, to be panting, sweating, aching. I felt alive!

And isn't it always like this? At the end of a long, tiring journey that is testing and trying, isn't it beautiful to let go and look back at where you came from and what difficulties you have overcome?