That’s a good freaking question. Is it the ability to truly bounce back? Is it the ability to show that you are ok, even if you are not? Is it just the fact that you have a good poker face and no one can tell how you are feeling?

Are we supposed to be statues? I don’t know anymore. All my career, I have been told “you are fine” “you are great.” Up until recently, I have been lead to believe that I can be better than how I portray myself. (Now, I’m not saying that I have always portrayed myself as a slacker, although I’m sure there’s time where it may seem as I am.)

Recently, I was told that I wasn’t resilient enough; which i took pretty hard. It didn’t make sense to me. I have been through so tough crap in my life, especially the last 20+years. I’m not going to go into it here, save that for another post, but lets just say that I thought that I had been resilient, harsh reality to be told that I haven’t been.

You see, although I thought I was being transparent, I was actually bringing everyone down around me and people were worrying about me. What a crock of sh*t. We are told that we need to ask for help, check on our wingmen, and simply take care of each other. How about taking that person aside and checking on them before possibly taking it higher than it needs to be.

I was in a bad spot, so they were not wrong. However, what hurt the most is I was not consulted when they became worried about me. It could be argued that I was consulted a few months before and things weren’t really getting better. But that is beside the point. Or is it? Maybe its not, maybe my separating the two “incidents” is not actually a viable thing. Maybe it was all a continuing saga. Maybe I needed to remember that I still was not alright. I sure as hell didn’t see it. What I saw was a person who was continuing to try. Trying just wasn’t good enough.

We all hit a bottom. It’s how we climb out of it and how others help. Maybe some people are there to throw the rope and climb in. Maybe some people are there to watch as you try to climb out yourself. Maybe there’s those people who just walk away until you managed to get out of the hole yourself. What I have realized is, that no matter how close you may think you are to some people, there’s always people who will fill each of those roles and it will surprise you who ends up climbing in with you.