Warning: This is longer than my usual blog. So, I advise starting with a cup of coffee, or better yet, a shot of scotch.

I gave up some years ago, not once but several times.  Maybe there were more times, I don’t know, but these are the four times that I remember, and now, they are stuck in my memory banks forever.  I can’t get rid of those memories, even though perhaps, they were not life changing or life and death issues.  Well, I take that back. One decision on quitting was life changing. 

But, these memories of quitting/giving up won’t go away with time. All four of them haunt me, in different ways, with different intensities, not necessarily influencing my life in any significant psychological fashion, but they hide there nevertheless in their iron – gated protected neuron clusters waiting to wake up and present themselves again, when I least expect it.

The first one was when I was quite young, maybe when I was seven or eight years old, I don’t remember.  I took piano private lessons from a guy in his dark, smelly home, and my parents would drive me there and since I was small, he had to put wooden planks on the piano seat so I was high enough to play the keys.  I remember that I learned to play with both hands, and using the pedals etc., and when my parents had guests in the house, they paraded me and my sister out to play the piano for the guests, then after that, I had to go to bed.  I guess I was a decent player for my age, no genius, that’s for sure.  Maybe I was lousy and no one wanted to tell me the truth. Either way, I thought Mr. B. my teacher, whose house had a strange smell, was creepy. Not only that, for some reason I was of the opinion that although my parents made me play my songs in front of their guests, playing the piano was for sissies.  I am not sure how I got that impression, but yes, I was convinced it was not for macho boys like me.  Playing drums or trumpet was the way to go to be manly in the musical field.  So, I quit.  Never to play the piano again, and as they years passed, I forgot everything I learned completely, and now, I regret that I quit.  Little did I know at the time, but macho man Clint Eastwood was a piano player.  Had I known that, who knows. Now it seems, I would love to have that skill back, years later, but all my piano knowledge is long gone.

The second instrument I learned to play was the trumpet.  Maybe because my dad played it when he was young.  Anyway, I played it during middle school and high school and was good enough to be first chair some times.  I played in the marching band, concert bands and jazz/rock bands. Well by my junior year in high school, I was running on the cross country and track teams and was quite successful in these sports, winning quite a few races.  It turns out, my senior year I lost interest in the trumpet, although my band teacher needed me to play, it seems. I wanted to concentrate more on training for track and cross country, and band just well, got in the way.  So, I quit again.  But, as I remember, I never had the courage to tell my band teacher/director.  I just did not sign up for the class my senior year, and puff, I was gone and my chair was empty in the concert room.  As it happened, it became quite awkward one fall day, my senior year when my former band was playing music for us runners, on the football field, as I ran an exhibition race for the fans.  I never had the courage to look the band director in the eyes after I won the race and my former band members played for my team. They even announced my name on the public address system of the football field, as the winner, and my former band colleagues probably said to each other, ‘traitor’.  So yes, I regret not so much that I quit band, but that I quit in such a selfish and perhaps disrespectful way.

Now comes the third event that I quit.  I was the number one runner on my high school cross – country team in high school.  Our team was exhausted from running in back-to-back competitions.  My coach came to me and told me there was a large invitational race on a Saturday, two days after my previous race, and he said it was voluntary to go, and that he would not send the team for this invitational, but he wondered if I was interested to go.  Maybe he wanted me to say yes to represent the team.  So, I didn’t think about it, and said yes.  During the race, at about the mile mark of a 2.5-mile run, I started feeling poorly, not sure the details, but I lost strength and started dropping back in the pack and had lost my energy, and it appears, my motivation.  So, instead of pushing through the discomfort and finishing in back of the pack, or perhaps last, I quit.   The only race I ever quit.   But I did.  Later, when I came home it was embarrassing to try to explain that I quit to my friends and colleagues. You see, they wanted to know how I did, and whether I won, and I knew I disappointed people, but mostly myself.  I do regret this, even to this day, even though I am sure the few people were involved have long forgotten.

I am sure you are wondering when I would finally mention my last episode of quitting.  Here it is: I attended the United States Air Force Academy.  I did well and was awarded the dean’s list, commandant’s list and superintendent’s list each semester for my academic and also military performance.  I also ran varsity intercollegiate track and cross country.  It turns out that despite my success, at two years, I needed to make a commitment to stay, or leave this well – respected institution. My eyes were not good enough to fly military aircraft at the time, and that was about the best job that could be had on graduation.  So, since I felt I had an aptitude for science and medicine, and asked my superiors if I could apply to medical school on graduation, and I was told no, not for five years.  So, I agonized about the decision I needed to make before the deadline, and knew it was probably the most important decision I could make in my life.  I even had to receive counseling from the vice commandant of cadets, a colonel, who told me: “son, you may fail in the civilian world.  Is this really what you want to do?”

You guessed it.  Despite the colonel’s attempt at persuading me not to, I quit the USAF Academy.  I felt like a dirty failure, although theoretically, I was not.  When I came home, my parents, I felt were disappointed in me, but they never said a word and my adjustment to civilian life was difficult.  I felt I left everyone down, but, interestingly, I did not feel I let myself down. It turns out, I was unaware that the commandant of cadets, a brigadier general, was communicating with my parents back and forth with letters about my decision-making process and counseling, and I found this out from the general himself, years later, when he actually became my patient!

Although I quit, this final time, I was able to accomplish my goal of becoming a physician, the career field that I chose, and it has been extremely rewarding to me and gratifying.  So, although it was an agonizing decision to quit, I did quit the Academy and I think it was the best decision of my life.  But that decision to quit, has haunted me to this day.  More than the others, this one drags on me sometimes.  People will ask me about my military service, or where I served, and after I tell them I resigned from the Academy, I see their disappointed faces, or at least I perceive this. Some do mention however, that I made the right decision, and this was a resignation, that although painful, needed to be made.

As years have passed, I have often experienced a recurrent dream that I am forced to go back to the Academy at the age of 40 or 50, or whatever, and finish my remaining classwork required as a junior or senior cadet!  Finally, after many years, this recurrent dream has vanished form my bedtime.

I was 19 or 20, and that was the last time I quit.

Ok, well I did “quit” my marriage, after many years, but I hung on as long as I could, for the sake of the children I loved until finally, I realized my life would end prematurely if I did not leave the poisoned environment that she created. They use the word divorce for this kind of quitting. Counseling did not help.  I delivered my two children myself, and my warm hands were the first to touch then as I brought them into this beautiful, but cruel world.  I cared for their success, growth, development, education and spiritual growth as much as any father could.  I taught them both to read, to excel in school, play sports and introduced the family to church.  I prayed for their happiness.

Unfortunately, I lost them.  I lost the children I love although they remain alive.

I lost them, because their pliable brains were successfully manipulated by an evil being who taught them how to hate somehow, the father who loved them. But I never lost hope that I would find them again and they would want to have a relationship with me, despite what they had been taught.  I was down for many years, struggling with that loss that I could not fathom.

I never quit.  I never lost hope that someday, I would see them again and spend some time talking about their lives. Or perhaps enjoy a cup of coffee, or a beer at least.  Or maybe exchange birthday or Christmas cards.   Now, the realism has sunk in that maybe it will never happen because it seems, they still own this indoctrinated hate against me so many years later, and despite the stress and sadness that brought me to near death in 2013, I do not quit. I always hope that love will win the day, but I understand now, the stark reality that it may not happen.  I will never in my life understand hate.

However, I must go on.  People need me.  Patients need me

I was told that although I do have writing skills, I may not be successful publishing novels, and I have received large volumes of critiques of my work from experts, many times negative, but I guess, in general constructive.  I get knocked down and rejected in the publishing world constantly, but I will not quit.  No matter what, because I believe I have something to say, by using the written word.  And I did publish my first novel in 2014, and am now editing a new manuscript for a thriller.

I continue to work in an intensive medical field.  It is exhausting at times, especially in the ICU dealing with death and dying, but despite my fatigue, I will not quit, because I feel that I am contributing something valuable and I will do it as long as I am capable of helping others.

So yes, I have quit some things, many years ago, but I have learned that you must never quit. Never quit the important challenges in life, no matter how difficult or painful.  If you do quit when you should not have, it will haunt you.   Believe me, I know.

© SRCarson 2021