I have a dislike for the word resilience. Primarily because its antithesis was used to describe my character. It really makes me hate myself.

At the time that I was described as such, I was admittedly experiencing episodes of depression where I fluctuated between infrequent intrusions of suicidal thought-responses to outside stressors and just feelings of despondency. But, often enough, I was feeling fine. I suppose that moment in my life is best characterized as me experiencing a prolonged episode of ultra-rapid-cycling.

Despite those internal struggles with my mood and adverse life struggles, to me, I seemed to be functioning quite well. I was working, granted just part-time, but I was also actively seeking more substantive work. It was like I was a high-functioning depressive.

I really just don't understand why I was described as being not resilient. It seems to me that I'd overcome quite a lot of adversities that frequented my life, beginning in my early childhood and continuing into my early adult years. I really can't remember a single instance of me giving up and throwing in the towel. I remember tribulation after tribulation that didn't give me substantial pause; and I continued on.

It's really strange to me. I just cannot figure it out. That was said to me six years ago, along with being told that I was a "quitter." I don't really understand why I was described that way. Maybe, at the time, despite what I saw from my own past and despite my self-described resolve at that then-present, I really was and had always been an unresilient quitter?

How long does a person have to be down before or if they pick themselves up to determine and label them as being not resilient? Is it ever okay to just walk away from an experience? It seems that if you do, you'll then be labeled a quitter. Maybe those experiences of my life, even though they seem to me to be objectively difficult burdens and waylaying duress, are in fact very simple things that are quite easy for the vast majority of individuals to overcome.

I suppose it doesn't really matter why that person described me as such.