Never Quit

Eat your sugar. Drink your Coke. Drink your alcohol. Smoke your cigarette. Do your drug of choice. Whatever it is, just do it, who cares. Just never quit. Quitting is running. Quitting is pretending you just need to do this one thing and you’ll finally be the person you wish to be. Quitting is a way to hide from the shame you carry and the skeletons in your closet.

When you quit a bad habit or vice, it’s because you’re ashamed of yourself and your life. Quitting is a way of signalling moral effort while simultaneously punishing yourself for past decisions. It is about trying to appear better than the choices you have already made, and will continue to make. But the past does not leave. It stays with you wherever you go.

Quitters are hollow in ways you cannot see. Every rule they follow, every habit they abandon, every pleasure they deny is a confession about who they really are. They are trying to hide from the life they cannot forgive themselves for.

Quitting does not erase shame or guilt. Quitting does not undo mistakes. It does not change the nights you cannot take back or the acts you cannot undo. You carry it all with you, whether you like it or not. The feeling sits in the tension of your eyes. If you pay close attention, people tell on themselves constantly without even realizing it.

The answer is never to cut shit out. All you’re doing is setting yourself up for another inevitable disappointment. If you ever have to motivate yourself to do anything, that means you don’t even want to do it at all. How long can you say no to eating the cookie until you finally give in?

When you’re actually done with something, you’ll know. No effort will ever be needed. Genuine contentment comes from alignment between desire and action, not from fabricated self-control.

When someone truly likes their life, when someone accepts themselves and the chaos of who they are, the world’s punishments feel lighter. Hangovers are rare, guilt comes less often, even the moments that would normally hurt pass without leaving marks. Bad habits do not feel like punishment. It is only when you hate your life that every indulgence becomes a penalty. The body mirrors the mind.

Whatever “it” is, do it fully. Let it remind you that you are here. Let it remind you that running does not free you. Let it remind you that the only way to exist is with yourself, fully, no matter the guilt, no matter the shame, no matter the weight you carry. Engaging with your desires, even those deemed harmful, is a more honest and vital way to live than suppressing them in pursuit of an idealized self.

The world will tell you to stop. It will tell you self-restraint is strength. It will tell you purity is progress. Watch those who quit completely. Watch the emptiness behind their composure. Watch the shame flowing beneath the clean surfaces. That is what they are running from. That is what they cannot leave.

Never quit. Stay in it. Stay with yourself. Stay with your past, with your feelings, with your skeletons. Do not erase it. Do not pretend it does not exist. It is all a part of you. It is not going anywhere.

Forget all that quitting bullshit. Go to the store right now. Get in your car. Warm it up. Drive to the gas station. Buy a pack and a lighter and take that sweet, sweet drag.

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