I won the prize for perseverance 3 years in a row

At my school, prize giving was a big deal. It was a tradition. Everyone gathered together, parents, teachers, students, from reception all the way to year 13. Names were read out on stage. Applause filled the room. Achievements were celebrated publicly.

There is one perseverance award for the entire school.

And I won it three years in a row.

I know why.

I know I didn’t win it because I was the most quietly resilient student, or because I had some hidden superpower. I won it because I had a brain disease. Because what I was dealing with was visible enough, serious enough, and hard enough to be recognised.

It’s strange to admit that.

It’s even stranger to sit in an audience year after year, knowing your name will be called again. Knowing the applause comes from sympathy as much as admiration. Knowing that perseverance, in this context, is inseparable from illness.

There’s something almost ironic about it. One prize. One student. Every year since my diagnosis. It became predictable. And yet, it never felt simple.

On the surface, it’s an honour. Perseverance is a powerful word. It means continuing when things are hard. It means not giving up. It means staying.

But it also quietly reinforces the reason you’re persevering in the first place.

By the third time, I understood it differently. I knew this would be the last time I could ever win it. Year 13 was the end. No more assemblies. No more prize giving. No more being publicly defined by the thing that changed my life.

And that brought mixed emotions.

Part of me felt proud. I did keep going. I showed up. I finished. That matters.

Another part of me felt tired of being known for surviving rather than simply being. Tired of having my effort framed through illness rather than ability. Tired of standing as “the one” example year after year.

Winning the perseverance prize three times taught me something unexpected. Perseverance isn’t about collecting recognition. It’s about continuing even when the recognition makes you uncomfortable. Even when it reminds you of things you didn’t choose.

I’ll never win that prize again. And strangely, that feels like closure.

Because perseverance doesn’t need a stage. It doesn’t need applause. It lives quietly in the choices you make every day to keep going, even when no one is watching.

And that part belongs to me, whether there’s a prize for it or not.