6 Signs Of a Toxic Friendship

We've all had That One Friend.  Someone we think is the greatest person we know.  Until a year or two later when we're suddenly doing everything in our power to get the fuck away from them, but still in some ways we're too afraid to cut them loose.  Hell, you may have one of those "friends" right now.  Or think you do.  But because they've become so good at gaslighting you, you're not really sure anymore.  Maybe you're the crazy one.

Well, based on having to kick my fair share of toxic assholes out of my life, I've observed six hallmarks of abusive behavior.  Red flags that should immediately set off your internal Bullshit Alarm if people you know exhibit these traits.

Obviously it's not comprehensive.  There are, unfortunately, far too many ways to be an asshole.  But it's a start:


1. Everything Is a World-Ending Crisis. Everything.

The thing to understand about Toxic Assholes is they don't see their friends as people.  They collect friends the way normal people collect stamps, shot glasses, and Pokémon.  Friends are things they brag about having and show off to the neighbors to make themselves seem like far better people than they really are.

Of course, when you treat people like shit, eventually they're going to figure it out and dump your ass.  So how do you keep them from wising up?  Keep 'em tired.  Keep them mentally exhausted by making your life a constant wagon-train of emergencies.

For normal people, there are generally two types of emergency.  Either somebody needs immediate medical attention, or somebody is about to lose their home/family/life savings/entire financial future/etc.  In other words, the word "emergency" means something, and that something is "I need help NOW or I'm irrevocably boned."

For the Toxic Asshole, "emergency" simply means "you're ignoring me."

Because for the Toxic Asshole, not being the center of your life 24/7/365.25 means that you're the one shot glass/stamp/Pokémon/etc. in their collection that is out of place, and you need corrected.  And because "emergency" means something else entirely to the rest of us, they will use that to their advantage in order to guilt you back into line.

When I say "everything is an emergency" to these people, I really do mean everything.  Package didn't arrive when the tracker said it would?  EMERGENCY.  Someone's insulted their favorite TV show/movie/actor/musician?  EMERGENCY.  Their take-out place got the order wrong?  EMERGENCY, DAMMIT!

You get the idea.

And the thing is, they know these aren't actual emergencies.  But they will use them as an excuse for "having a panic attack" and needing you to talk them down.  And how will you know this?  Because if you even suggest the idea of calling a crisis hotline or even using a service like IMAlive or 7 Cups of Tea (both excellent depression and anxiety resources), they will insist they've tried those services and they don't really work and they just really need you to talk to them. Often laced with thinly veiled threats of ending the friendship (or worse) if you don't -- or can't -- comply.

For the rest of us, friendship is about mutual caring, respect, trust, and just generally liking being around other people.  For the Toxic Asshole, friendship is purely about ego.  They want to be able to brag about having friends without making the effort to be a person worthy of them.

Everything that ever goes wrong is an emergency to them, because it gives them an excuse to demand every spare moment you have, and if you decline to fork it over, you end up looking like the asshole.  Either way -- at least in their minds -- they win.

2. Your Feelings Are Never As Important As Theirs (Or Important At All, Really)

When the rest of us are helping a friend through a rough time, or when a friend comes to us with a legit problem, we put the focus on them and their feelings.  It's just natural for true friends to be empathetic and help each other out.  Not so with the Toxic Asshole, who may or may not pay lipservice to your needs, but in the end will refocus the situation to be all about them.

Because if you have time to think about your own pain, you may discover eventually that they are the source of it.

The Toxic Asshole, when confronted with your need for help, will suddenly have an issue of their own that is far more pressing than yours.  An "emergency" that you must help them through.  Purely as a diversion from your own needs, wants, and desires, because to them, it's dangerous for you to have anything of your own since it might pull you out of line with their agenda.

As an example of what this phenomenon looks like, I was talking to the most recent Toxic Asshole I had to remove from my life (before I finally got the guts to break away from them) about a depressive fit I was having that made me disappear for a few days.  Her response was to tell me how much my absence had affected her, had triggered her depression.  With some not-so-subtle hints and threats that Bad Shit Would Happen if I ever did it again.

She was fully aware that I was in a very fragile place mentally, and still proceeded to lay a guilt trip on me about being away for a few days.  It's one of the many reasons we're not friends anymore.

Why?  Because she could not let me have my own pain.  She could not let me have my own problems, my own bad day.  Because that meant I was my own person, and not a tool for her amusement.

But when the shoe is on the other foot...

3. It's OK If They Do It (Everyone Else Gets Crucified)

...Well.  It's different then.

You remember that kid you used to play with at recess, who would change the rules of the game just so they could do shit you weren't allowed to in order to score more points?  Well, the Toxic Asshole is the adult version.  And instead of kickball, you're playing Risk: Social Life Edition.  But otherwise, it's the same M.O.: they can break the rules, but not you.

In my case, the Toxic Asshole I dealt with was allowed to demand every waking moment of my time to deal with crisis after crisis.  But if anybody so much as tried to talk about a problem of their own with her, they were asking far too much.  Because she would then fake a panic attack or depressive episode to get out of the conversation.

She was also allowed to make other people's problems all about her, but if anybody else did that, they were manipulative and abusive.  She was allowed to make cryptic talk about hurting herself purely to glean sympathy from others, but if other people deigned to talk about their problems just because they had nowhere else to go, they were attention whores.  She could create a whole other social media account to bitch about specific people while still pretending to be friends with them, but if anyone talked about her behind her back, they were cowards (and manipulators/abusers).  She can make cracks about the weight and sexual orientation of people she doesn't like, and it's not fat-shaming or homophobic purely because she's doing it.

The Toxic Asshole labors under the notion that every terrible thing they do is excusable or justified, but they are the only ones allowed to use such excuses or justifications.  The rules they judge everyone else by do not apply to their own actions.

You remember Engywook's description of the Magic Mirror Gate from The Neverending Story?  If not, here's a little walk down Wasted Childhood Lane:

Kind people find that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards. Confronted with their true selves, most men run away screaming.

The Toxic Asshole refuses to confront their true self, and creating loopholes in the rules just for them and nobody else is but one way of avoiding the Magic Mirror Gate (and thus, the Southern Oracle and the final piece of info they need to complete their quest).

But that's not going to last forever, because people are, by and large, not as stupid as the Toxic Asshole imagines.  Sooner or later, they're going to wise up and figure out what's going on.  And our Asshole is more than prepared for this eventuality because...

4. Everything Is Your Fault

In case you haven't guessed, I'm a pop-culture freak.  The more obscure, the more it's up my alley.  And the 2008 indie film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising illustrates my next point perfectly.  If you've never seen it (and you really should), the gist is that the crew lost the campaign from the first film, and resident douchebag Cass demands a replay because he insists there is no game he can't win.  Because one of the band's players is unavailable, they don't have the full quorum needed to restart.  Cass recruits his ex-girlfriend Joanna as the final player, with the obvious intent to humiliate her and win the game because he assumes she's going to be a terrible, terrible newbie at it.  Unfortunately for him she's a math-and-logic whiz, and being both a girl at a table full of geeks and not a douchebag, his plan backfires when she wins over the entire crew.  Cass doesn't take it well (scene starts at 1:27:08 if you want to skip ahead):

Sound like any "friends" you might have?

When people start to get too suspicious of the Toxic Asshole's intentions, this is when they pull out one of their more devious tricks: the scapegoat.

Just like Cass in that meltdown, if you don't comply with the rules and allow them their loopholes, suddenly you are the one who is cheating.  You are the one who's making the game not fun.  You are the incompetent player.  They might've flipped the table and ragequit, but it's all your fault for pissing them off.

Narcissistic projection is one of the more effective tools in the Toxic Asshole's arsenal.  The one I dealt with flat-out accused her ex-girlfriend of things she did herself.  It's yet another way to preserve their ideal selves and not have to face the music.  If people start seeing through the hypocrisy, they just find some other donkey to pin the tail on.

And it works especially well because once a victim is stuck with the blame for everything, it's far easier to get them to accept responsibility for it, whether they're at fault or not.  Which will serve to draw them deeper into the web (and consequently, it'll be that much tougher to get out).

5. You Are Responsible For Their Emotions

One thing you will never hear a Toxic Asshole say is "I was/got angry/annoyed/etc."  Instead, their refrain will be "she/he pissed me off/annoyed me/etc."  Because one of the hallmarks of toxic and abusive behavior is making other people responsible for their moods.  It's one of the most insidious things in their playbook, because it accomplishes two goals: 1) absolving the Toxic Asshole of responsibility for themselves, and 2) laying a guilt trip on the particular minion they're trying to keep in line.

We all experience incidents where someone else's behavior is profoundly annoying/enraging/hurtful.  But the effect it has on us -- our emotions -- are still ours.  People who are not Toxic Assholes realize this on some level, and thus even when we are annoyed/angry/etc., we have ways of coping with it that don't drag other people kicking and screaming into the picture.

The Toxic Asshole refuses to use such coping mechanisms.  Everything they do that's been said so far -- the constant emergencies, devaluing others' feelings, moving the goalposts to benefit themselves, and projecting their unacceptable behaviors onto others -- is all leading up to this, to making other people responsible for what they feel.

The particular Toxic Asshole in my life would fake suicide attempts and ideation to get attention, and then blame anyone who ignored her for why she felt awful.  It was her way of guilting people into hanging around her, by taking advantage of their empathy and holding the fear of what she would do to herself if they left over their heads.  This was especially effective on people like me, who had seriously considered and attempted suicide before.  And frankly, those are exactly the kind of people she targets.  The vulnerable.  Those who have been abused at least once, and are thus prone to re-victimization.  Especially those who have been emotionally violated.

Because people who have suffered abuse are pliable in that regard.  They can be convinced to hold themselves responsible pretty easily, because someone else has already planted that seed.  Someone else has already held them responsible for things they have no control over.  Someone else has already used them as a scapegoat.  To the rest of the world, that's messed the hell up.  To the abused, that's just life.

And to the Toxic Asshole, that makes a mark ripe for the sniping.  They're like a broken vase.  Even if they've been repaired as much as possible, the cracks are still there.  And those cracks are weak points.  Hit them just right, and the whole thing will shatter all over again.

With the Toxic Asshole, nearly all of their friends will have this quality.  See, while the Toxic Asshole is frighteningly good at what they do, they're also incredibly lazy.  It's a rare thing when they choose a mark that has never been subject to the kind of tactics they use (and may therefore be perfectly capable of resisting them and telling the Toxic Asshole to get bent).  Because it's way easier to break a vase that's been repaired than to shatter a brand new one.

6. Standing Up For Yourself Is Treason

So what happens when the mark has finally had all they can take, and refuses to play the dutiful boot-licking emotional whipping boy?

Oh, bitch it is on, then.

In the twisted world of narcissistic abusers, standing up to them is their kryptonite.  Nothing will make a Toxic Asshole lose their shit quite like being challenged, and coming to the realization that all the gaslighting, manipulation, and guilt-tripping skills they've so carefully honed over the years no longer work.

That for all intents and purposes, they've lost.

At that point, the mask comes off and like the Grand High Witch, they're revealed for the pickled, maggot-ridden sack of putrefication they are.

That's when they'll either start the smear campaign against you by contacting all your friends and loved ones and telling them what a crazy bitch you are, or if they're too cowardly for that (like mine was), they'll go retreating back to their sycophantic fan club for the attention and sympathy fix that you're no longer providing.

And like any addict, they'll immediately start looking for a new source (provided they didn't have one lined up already, and many of them do).

See, your average well-adjusted person does not need constant attention.  Your average well-adjusted person understands boundaries, and understands that simply being their friend doesn't entitle them to every spare moment you have.  Nor does it make you their personal stress ball that they can squeeze every time they need to let off steam.  An average well-adjusted person will see their friends as people rather than as appliances, tools, and characters in a TV show they control.

This is because the average well-adjusted person has confidence in themselves and their ability to be decent human beings, such that they don't have to seek constant reassurance from everyone.  They're satisfied with who they are, enough that they don't need to warp reality into their own personal Holodeck.

Toxic Assholes, on the other hand, are thoroughly empty people.  They have confidence in spades, but it's confidence in the same way aspartame is sweet.

Having a friendship with a Toxic Asshole is like starring in a movie helmed by the most nightmarish director you've ever had to work with.  The script changes without warning, and your role is being constantly rewritten to suit their needs.  At first you'll be cast as the loyal sidekick.  If you get fed up and walk off the set, you'll get written out as a supervillain, for two reasons:

1) it absolves the Toxic Asshole of all responsibility

2) it makes an example of you to the rest of the film crew, detailing exactly what kind of treatment they can expect if they ever step out of line.

In my case, the Toxic Asshole I was friends with for entirely too long started devaluing and discarding me the minute I began withdrawing from her.  I went from being the friend she went running to whenever an "emergency" presented itself to being berated for not being available and then finally talked up as the person who ruined her life.  Purely because I was too emotionally exhausted to care and finally started taking my life back.

That's really the greatest tell for whether you have a Toxic Asshole on your hands.  What happens when you try to set -- and more importantly, enforce -- healthy boundaries.  If someone has an exaggeratedly awful reaction to being told "no?"  That's your giant neon sign that they're a Toxic Asshole and you need to get out.

Because what it's taken me so long to realize is that normal people don't fucking do this.

Normal people don't flip their shit when you tell them not to bug you so you can get work done/go grocery shopping/bathe/use the bathroom/etc.  Normal people don't flat-out ignore your "no" and keep pestering you even after you've said you'll be unavailable.  Normal people don't threaten to hurt and kill themselves when they don't get their way.  Normal people don't make you feel guilty, anxious, and worthless for having your own needs.

Standing up to a Toxic Asshole is the scariest goddamn thing you will ever do.  Because you've been conditioned to fear losing their friendship and approval.  You've been conditioned to value their opinion more than your own.  They trained you as such in order to feed their ego.

But as scary as it is, it's also worth it.  Because once you realize that their "friendship" is hollow, artificial, one-sided, and absolutely worth losing, the happier you'll be.

Mental Health Awareness Week: Depression Is Not Sadness

Depression isn't sadness.  Not even deep sadness.  In fact, take the deepest sadness and grief and anguish you could possibly imagine, and that would be an improvement.

Why?  Because even sadness and grief and anguish mean you still feel something.

Depression is having a steady supply of novocaine pumped into your skull where your brain should be.

Depression is the feeling that your body is a ten-ton weight you're dragging around.

Depression is not having the energy to attempt suicide.

Depression is looking at a plate of your favorite food and picking at it even though you're so hungry your stomach lining is trying to eat itself.

Depression is feeling like everything inside you has already died and you're just passing the time until your body catches on.

Depression is not even caring whether or not you care.

Depression is deliberately injuring yourself because even pain is better than nothing.

Depression is not being able to sleep past 5AM unless you've been awake longer than 20 hours prior.

Depression is not even sleeping so much as being occasionally unconscious.

Depression is whenever people talk about the future, you feel left out because you don't have one.

Depression is Hell.

5 Horrible Things You Learn From Surviving a Suicide Attempt

I was on my way home from work one day and feeling like frozen, thawed, and then partially reheated shit when I walked out in front of a speeding bus.

The driver fortunately had good enough reflexes not to hit my ass, so I’m still alive and unharmed and able to write this article for your entertainment. The way we talk about suicide as a society -- everything from the Saw franchise to the speculation regarding Robin Williams’ death last August -- makes it seem as though killing yourself is like becoming a Jedi. Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’

That...is really the furthest thing from the truth. There are plenty of tries, with varying degrees of seriousness. And as long as you’re still alive and you still feel like parboiled shit, you’re at risk for trying again and eventually getting it right. Because even though suicide has been around as long as we have as a species, we still have a very poor understanding of what it takes for self-preservation, the strongest force in biology, to fail. Mostly because suicide is one of those things where people who succeed can’t exactly come back and tell us what the fuck happened.

But for people who fail at it? Well, read on.

1. Suicide Is Rarely Planned (At Least Not in Great Detail)

One of the reasons suicide shocks people is because we like to think that a decision as huge as ending your life isn’t the kind of thing people do on a whim. You think ahead, you plan what you want done with your body, who gets your collection of Star Trek memorabilia, etc. All the stuff that we think about when we’re planning our deaths. But most people who are thinking that far ahead are rational enough to not consider suicide (unless they know they’re dying anyway due to an illness or injury, and that’s a whole other kettle of fish).

The reality is that for a lot of people, the decision to kill themselves gets made in the same way college students decide to get a tattoo (including copious amounts of alcohol). The whole “this is fucking permanent” thing doesn’t really register, except in the final moments before the noose tightens/you hit the water/the car crashes/the last pill goes down your throat/the gun goes off.

In my case? I just didn’t give a shit what happened anymore as long as I wasn’t going to be around to deal with it. I hadn’t been planning to walk in front of that bus until I actually did it. My thought process literally went something like this: There’s a bus coming. If I don’t stop walking it’ll kill me. Oh well.

It was only afterward, when everyone in a 10-foot radius was freaking the fuck out because holy shit some girl we ride with every day almost got clipped by a bus, that I realized what had even happened. And I went along with the assumption that I hadn’t been paying attention because it’s easier to admit you’re a fucking idiot than admit to being depressed. But that’s a rant for another day. Point is, I didn’t plan months in advance that I was going to walk in front of a city bus and end it all. I made that decision quite literally on the fifteen-minute bus ride over there. It was a spur-of-the-moment choice when I was at rock bottom, still digging, didn’t think I had anyone around to stop me, and I was past caring.

2. People Will Doubt You’re Suicidal If You Don’t Seem Depressed Enough

The other reason suicide deaths come as such a shock to many people is because due to pervasive stereotypes about mental illness, we have these horribly inaccurate preconceived notions about what a depressed or suicidal person looks and acts like. We imagine the Myspace teen holed up in his room blogging about bartending in the dark while A Simple Plan blares in the background.

We never consider that our brother who manages to drag his ass out of bed every day to get to work may be thinking of ending it all because he hates his job but it’s the only place that would hire him, and he’s buried under a mountain of student loan debt that his children will be paying off when he’s 90. We never consider that our sister who is bubbly and funny and sweet and dorky just wants to make the world forget about her because she can’t see that her company is appreciated, and feels as though the world would be a much better place if she was no longer in it.

People with depression learn to be very good at hiding their pain. Often because when we do bring it up, we invite all of the stigma associated with it. We’re lazy. We complain too much. We’re too negative. We need to just get the fuck over it and make ourselves useful. So we learn quickly that it’s easier to put up and shut up.

When the bus missed me, everyone on the street -- people I rode with regularly -- just assumed I hadn’t been paying attention. I got told how lucky I was. How “God gave you another chance today.” I got asked what the hell I was doing. And all the while I wanted to just scream at them “IT WAS DELIBERATE, YOU STUPID FUCKS, STOP RUBBING MY FACE IN IT!”

But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to get hauled off in a squad car down to a psych ward for treatment I can’t afford. And also because telling well-meaning people who are happy you’re not a stain on the pavement to stop being glad you’re alive is kind of a dick move.

But the point is that I didn’t look like the classic preconceived image of a depressed person. I didn’t look or act like someone who was fed up enough with her life to walk in front of a three-ton speeding death bullet on purpose and give absolutely zero fucks. So the thought that “hey, this girl might’ve been trying to get herself killed” never crossed their minds. And there’s no reason it really should, either. Because in the world of people who aren’t depressed, who the fuck even does that? It’s easier and less painful to just assume I’m some dipshit who didn’t see the bus coming. And from my point of view, it was easier and less painful for me not to correct them.

3. You Will Hate Yourself For Failing

After I had assured everyone at the scene with blatant lies that I was okay, I waited for them to catch their buses and leave, then spent about twenty minutes sitting on a bench and crying. Not from the shock of holy fuck I almost died. I was crying because I felt even more worthless because shit, killing yourself is easy and I’m such a complete fuck-up I couldn’t even do that right.

I was mad at myself for not succeeding. And I couldn’t simply do it again right that second because now people were on alert, and I’d have less of a chance than I did before with the element of surprise.

Life is not like the Saw films, where the title character survives a suicidal car wreck to come out with a new outlook on life and a drive to make people mutilate themselves in order to prove how much they don’t want to die. I survived a suicide attempt to turn around and hate myself and life even more than I did before. I felt like a coward, for choosing a passive method and not being brave enough to just do it.

And that’s all part of depression. Of finding every stupid thing you’ve done and/or failed at and believing those deeds to be all you’re capable of. Like the Dementors from the Harry Potter series (which Rowling totally intended as a metaphor for her own battle with the disorder). A depressed person could literally find the cure for AIDS and win a Nobel Prize and they would still feel stupid and worthless and hopeless because of the one time they tried to make an omelette and burned it so badly they had to throw out pan and all.

“But that’s irrational!”, you would say. And you’d be correct. Of course it’s irrational. That’s why it’s a mental illness.

4. You Will Hate Other People For Wanting to Help You

Besides myself, I also hated the driver for not hitting me. And the people who were asking if I was okay. Nevermind that these people were genuinely far more concerned for my life than I was at that moment and really did just want to help. I hated them for not letting me die like I wanted. For making me fail.

That’s another part of why seeking help for depression is so fucking difficult. I’ve often likened it to that kid who used to poke you in the back of the neck with a pencil in math class. Only now he’s using an icepick. It’s a little inner head-voice that is constantly telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are. And eventually you develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome towards it by agreeing with it just to shut it up for a while. And every time someone tries to do something to make you feel better, even as small as giving you a compliment, up pops that voice again. Feeding you a line about their true motives, and that they couldn’t possibly legit care about you because who the fuck does that? And once again, you start agreeing to make it shut up. And you begin to resent the very people trying to help you because you think they’re wasting their time on a lost cause like you. You don’t want help. You just want to die.

It’s a little like having an abusive spouse. Only that spouse lives in your head and you have to stand by and defend them because you have nobody else. And again, that’s another function of depression. It isolates you. It makes you feel detached from the world at large, like you don’t belong with other people. And you start to hate anyone who tries to get past the barbed wire, electrified fencing, ten-foot-thick steel walls, gun turrets, and lasers that your abusive head-spouse has set up to keep everyone out so they can have you all to themselves.

Because how dare these people talk bad about your beau. Even when he’s metaphorically (and sometimes literally) beating the shit out of you.

5. Getting Help Is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do (But It's Worth It)

The thing about life is that we’re all living on borrowed time. When you’re suicidal, you feel like you will never make enough to pay back the loan, so fuck it, you may as well just declare bankruptcy and call it a day. And because Depression Logic is working on your brain like an infomercial works on your grandmother at two in the morning, that certainly seems like a good idea at the time.

And like the infomercial, the product is a total ripoff and you can’t return it.

Getting help is hard. Because literally everything in you is going to fight against getting better. That abusive head-spouse has been a part of you for so long that you feel like you won’t even know who you are anymore if you get rid of it. But that’s the thing: you really can’t get rid of it, not completely. And any healthcare professional who claims to be able to ‘fix’ your depression needs to be reported to the state board to get their license revoked. No amount of medication or talk therapy is going to rewire your brain chemistry to make you not depressed anymore. The goal of mental healthcare is management, not a cure.

And what you have to learn to do when managing depression is to ignore the voice or make it shut up without capitulating to it. It’s giving the abusive head-spouse his own room with the door walled shut and ignoring his screaming about what a bitch you are for keeping him cooped up like that (alternating with crocodile tears and blatantly false promises to not call you a bitch anymore if you let him out). And sometimes, even with help, that voice is still going to be hard to ignore.

If you want a new lease on life, you have to make a down payment. And by the time you get around to taking out that loan, your credit is shot. So your down payment and fees for the first few months (maybe years) are going to be through the goddamn roof. But unlike that piece of junk on the infomercial, a new life is worth every last red cent. And it does eventually get easier to make the payments each month. Though some months will be more difficult than others. Even with treatment, there will be relapses (which is what happened to me).

The hardest part is filling out that initial application because it means admitting just how shitty you feel. When I first started receiving treatment, my general physician had to wheedle it out of me. All the signs were there; but until I admitted to what was happening and stopped blaming my razor scars on my cat, his hands were tied.

I had to want to get better. I had to say I wasn’t going to take my abusive head-spouse back anymore. I had to make that decision entirely on my own. And it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life because it meant standing up for myself, against myself.

That’s really what depression is in the end. You are literally battling your own mind. Every day. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go back to sleep. The part of you that wants to live is fighting the part of you that wants to die. Occasionally, that second part gets the upper hand.

Surviving a suicide attempt isn’t the failure it feels like at first. What it really means is that you still have some fight left in you. There is still a part of you that isn’t quite ready to give up yet. A part of you that hasn’t lost all hope. That self-preservation instinct is still there.

That’s the exact opposite of failure; it’s the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.