Family situation. Advice welcome, pity not

I have been reading here for a while. Hecate says posting would be good for me, which is what she says about most things I would rather not do.

The short version: a Titan has taken my father's house. My whole family is inside it — my father, my mother, my brother. I was an infant when it happened, so I have never actually met any of them. I was raised at the Crossroads by the Witch and trained every night of my life for the single purpose of getting them back.

Every night I go out. Every night something kills me, and I come back to the Crossroads, and I start again. I am getting further. I am not getting there.

I am not asking how to win. I know how to win: I have to get better. I am asking how the rest of you kept going through the long middle part, when the end was nowhere in sight. Some of you had ten years of it.

Full disclosure for the rest of the forum: I am at the Crossroads too, in an advisory capacity, and I have watched this young woman walk out into the dark more nights than I can count.

Melinoë, the honest answer is that I did not keep going through the middle part. I kept going through the next part. Get past the Cyclops. Get past the whirlpool. Get off the island. If I had spent those years thinking about Ithaca I would have lain down on some beach and stayed there. Home is the reason. It cannot also be the plan.

Also — you are getting further. I keep notes. You are.

I knew your brother. I trained him, in your father's house, back when I was still assigned there. Stubborn, reckless, tried the front door every single night, died every single night, came back grinning. It drove your father mad.

I will tell you what I told him, since it is the only thing I know that is worth passing on: the death is not the failure. Stopping is the failure. Every time you come back you are carrying something you did not have the time before, even if it is only the knowledge of exactly how you died.

He got out, eventually. You are from the same stock. You will get in.

Thank you, both of you.

Achilles — I did not know that. Hecate does not talk about my family much; she says it makes me sloppy. I will have more questions about him, if you will allow it. Not in this thread.

She will not say this herself, so I will. She is further along than she thinks and not as far as she wants. Both are correct.

Now log off, Melinoë. Training at dusk.

Death to Chronos.