There is a point, after attempting something so many times, where failure stops feeling like failure. It is a point beyond disappointment, rejection, hopelessness…it is a feeling that completely obliterates, that utterly nullifies any sense of feeling in the first place. It’s like slipping down into a familiar ditch after scaling the same mountain for the umpteenth time. There is a vague sense of defeat, but that has all but receded. That fated climber never saw, never even felt the mountain in the first place; he’s become a crazed instrument, the mountain needn’t even be part of the equation. It is all in the act of the inevitable failure that he continues to try. The very nature of constant loss has become a sick sense of motivation, or an engine of masochism. The need to feel needed – not out of love, compassion, those are buried deep under avalanches of past attempts – and the need to feel defeated; it becomes invigoration, it becomes salvation, it is humiliation.

It is that point when you look into the mirror, when you can look at your own pitiful, tear-stained eyes – and grin in anticipation of the next journey uphill.