Arsenal's stadium in the rain. (pic CC 2.0 by Paul Hudson.)

It had all come apart.

It was supposed to be easy for Arsenal, the 140-year-old British football club from North London. They'd been on top of the Premier League for months now, a final christening in a years-long attempt to reach the top and win the league trophy for the first time in over two decades. Three years in a row they had come in second, beaten and bullied largely by Manchester City, a club who had dominated the league in the last decade, using a seemingly-endless supply of cash from the Abu Dhabi royal family to buy a team that seemed unstoppable. But this year, Arsenal had been winning while City was stumbling. That is, until recently.

What seemed like destiny, at this moment in late April, had unraveled.

Arsenal had been losing ground on what had been a significant lead on the title after a series of unfortunate draws and last-minute losses, while City had corrected their previous errors and was now on a dominant winning streak that felt all too familiar.

The two teams were slated to face each other in what many were billing as the game that would decide the title, despite there being a month left in the season. The tension among Arsenal fans was as thick as you could imagine. We'd seen this whole thing play out before. Throughout the entire 90 minutes there was never a moment that felt good.

Arsenal lost this crucial, season-defining game, 2-1 with a goal from City's arrogant star Erling Haaland in the 90th minute.

It was crushing.

At that moment, as the clock ran out, everything felt like it was slipping away.

In the moment after that devastating loss, Declan Rice, the dependable midfielder and true heart of the team—eyes red like he'd been crying or trying hard not to—shook his head and said "It's not done."

We know this not because he gave a press conference, but because it was caught on camera at the end of the game, his face endlessly zoomed in on in a million social media clips, his mouth moving just enough that you could lip read:

It's not done.

But at the time, it felt done.

There were too few games, Arsenal had been on a slump that seemed to only be getting worse, and City, well, they were the best team that money could buy, betting against them at this point in the season seemed a fools errand.

It would be easy to give up at that moment. History would tell you the ending. It had been 22 years since Arsenal had won the trophy, with the last three the team falling just short. Fans around the world had seen it happen over and over again.

And yet.

I haven't watched football for long. I do not want you to think I am a long-suffering, lifelong fan. Hell, up until a few years ago I would tell you that I didn't even like sports. All of this has been a thing I picked up during the waning years of the pandemic, at a time when things felt well and truly hopeless. My family had been struggling to manage things in our too-small house and football on weekend mornings had become something that had brought us closer and brought us hope.

I think a lot about a quote from the author John Green, who talks about his struggles with mental health as much as he talks about his love of football: "Watching football, I know what I don't know in real life--that miracles are possible (even routine), and that hope is perpetually justified."

Hope is perpetually justified.

This isn't a story about sports, not really, certainly not about soccer, and barely about Arsenal. It's about the moment where it all unravels, where the plans you thought you had unwind in front of your eyes. And it's about what you do next.

Because even when it feels like it. Even when you are sure that it's all over, it's not done.

Arsenal went on to grind out victories in every match that followed. None of them were easy. Had they lost a single one, it would be well and truly over. Every minute felt tenuous at best, like gripping the edge of a cliff.

It was not pretty. It was not fun to watch. There were moments—too many moments—where it all felt like it would come crashing down. But it didn't.

It wasn't done.

Today the Arsenal Football Club hoist the Premier League trophy above their heads. The victory is a testament to never giving up, to believing you can do the impossible, to knowing that hope is perpetually justified, and most importantly to never ever accepting that something is done.