Fuerza

Resistance and resilience are two words that I probably learned in high school, maybe even before, but I specifically remember understanding the meaning of these two words for the first time during undergrad in a wildlife management class. We were discussing stands of forest and how they react to a disaster, a forest fire for example. A stand of forest that is highly resistant will remain more or less undisturbed; the fire will roar through, burn out the underbrush, leave the bark on the trees charred and blackened, maybe kill a couple squirrels or a nest full of baby birds, but it will keep on growing, almost like it never happened. The crowns of the trees will not burn, large numbers of animals will not die. That forest will remain for lack of a vaguer word, unchanged. A stand of forest that is highly resilient might be all but leveled by the fire, maybe just one or two small trees will surive, animals will flee and find nothing to return too. But if that forest is resilient it will bounce back, the forest will grow again, animals will return, and maybe it will be a little different but it will still be. With time time that forest will be again. I am working on a metaphor.
Strength to me is something I've always defined as resistance. A strong person is resistant. A strong person avoids tragedies or walks away from them unscathed. A strong person, stand fights and wins. A strong person runs and doesn't get caught. A strong person never finds them self in a struggle. This is wrong. A strong person is resilient.
I truly came to learn the meaning of the words resistant and resilience in Panama.
I've always been proud of the strength and independence that I posses. I've prided myself on not letting the words "help me," pass through my lips often. I built this illusion of myself and my strength in my head. I pictured myself as a tall proud redwood, fire unable to penetrate my bark. I was unaffected by hardship, tragedy, or bad luck, fire proof. I realized in college that I was short, but contnued to prolong the illusion of a redwood a bit more abstractly.
Repeated droughts, fires, and invasive species can leave a stand of tallest, proudest, and strongest redwood trees weak. Repeated disturbance and bad luck can mean the difference between a resistant forest and a clump of tall proud kindling and then all it takes is one disaster, natural or man made. A couple years of drought and a discarded cigarette butt can blacken a hill side.
Avoiding disaster, escaping nicked and worn over and over again was not enough. I was strong, too strong for help. I just bottled it up and let it keep tearing me to pieces. Hardship after hardship, I told myself that I could handle it, "I'm strong, I'm resistant."
I was resistant, I was strong. But it turns out that resistance is not enough, I learned that my definition of strength was not enough.
Life can break a person down until they aren't capable to resist tragedy anymore. Until something comes along and shatters them.
I wasn't letting myself accept the fact that bad shit happened,  I wasn't letting myself bounce back. I was burning over and over again. I was one of those trees that's root system had been smoldering for years and years out of sight until the fire found the break it needed to consume it.
It turns out I am resilient and I'm starting to feel better than I have in a long time, stronger, more independent. Admitting my problems, misfortunes, and for lack of a better word, catastrophes to myself has made me feel stronger than I had ever felt in my life.
Shit happens to everyone, sometimes it's our fault, a lot of the time its not and I'm only just realizing it.
There is strength in Resilience. There is strength in a come back. There is strength in asking for help.