“Looking back at the times people called me strong, it was always when I was admitting frailty, that I was exposing the cracks in my architecture. Things have to prove their strength to be labeled as such. They need to be tested. It’s not the same as being big or being small, strength is a show, a feat, a stillness under pressure, and alternately, an explosion, an unfathomable show of force, the moving of mountains. Strength is not defined by your inability to be knocked down, but rather by your will to stand back up. At the bottom, you must recognize the difference between suffering and wallowing, because wallowing is a choice, and it’s one that we can see so clearly in hindsight to be foolish. We can opt out, we can stand up, we can change songs and we can pull ourselves up from the dregs. That’s willpower, that’s desire, that is strength.”
– Alida Nugent